A Look at Ronald Reagan's Iran Weapon Deals

As Congress debates the deal that the was worked out with Iran and the rest of the world over their Iran's nuclear program, one of the major criticisms Republicans are leveling against the deal is that it didn't include the release of four American hostages.

Iran takes hostages in order to extract concessions from the United States. If you include hostages as part of these deals, then that only encourages Iran to kidnap more Americans.

There was, however, an American president who did cut deals with Iran for hostages, setting the stage for endless abductions of Americans by Iran: Ronald Reagan.

Obama's nuclear weapons deal isn't the first weapons deal the United States has made with Iran. During the Iran-Contra affair the Reagan Administration sold missiles to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages being held by Iranian terrorists in Lebanon:

In 1985, while Iran and Iraq were at war, Iran made a secret request to buy weapons from the United States. [National Security Advisor Robert] McFarlane sought Reagan's approval, in spite of the embargo against selling arms to Iran. McFarlane explained that the sale of arms would not only improve U.S. relations with Iran, but might in turn lead to improved relations with Lebanon, increasing U.S. influence in the troubled Middle East. Reagan was driven by a different obsession. He had become frustrated at his inability to secure the release of the seven American hostages being held by Iranian terrorists in Lebanon. As president, Reagan felt that "he had the duty to bring those Americans home," and he convinced himself that he was not negotiating with terrorists. While shipping arms to Iran violated the embargo, dealing with terrorists violated Reagan's campaign promise never to do so. Reagan had always been admired for his honesty.

The arms-for-hostages proposal divided the administration. Longtime policy adversaries Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State George Shultz opposed the deal, but Reagan, McFarlane and CIA director William Casey supported it. With the backing of the president, the plan progressed. By the time the sales were discovered, more than 1,500 missiles had been shipped to Iran. Three hostages had been released, only to be replaced with three more, in what Secretary of State George Shultz called "a hostage bazaar."

Yes, Reagan sold thousands of missiles to hostage-taking terrorists even as they continued to take more hostages. Reagan not only cut deals with terrorists, he was duped by them. Then he lied about it, only to be forced to admit it a week later.

At the time Reagan was publicly backing Saddam Hussein (yes, that Saddam Hussein) in the Iran-Iraq War, but Reagan was secretly selling missiles to Saddam's enemy.

Bibi Netanyahu has utterly condemned the current nuclear agreement with Iran. But who funneled the weapons to Iran during the 1980s? The same country that constantly makes hostage deals, sometimes even exchanging Hezbollah terrorists -- Iran's proxies in Lebanon -- for Israeli corpses: none other than Israel:

It was planned that Israel would ship weapons to Iran, and then the United States would resupply Israel and receive the Israeli payment. The Iranian recipients promised to do everything in their power to achieve the release of the U.S. hostages. The plan deteriorated into an arms-for-hostages scheme, in which members of the executive branch sold weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of the American hostages. Large modifications to the plan were devised by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council in late 1985, in which a portion of the proceeds from the weapon sales was diverted to fund anti-Sandinista and anti-communist rebels, or Contras, in Nicaragua.

The Contras were right-wing death squads who killed indiscriminately; they were most famous for the murder of nuns, including an American, in 1990.

There are also credible allegations by Abolhasan Banisadr, the former president of Iran, as well as former National Security Council officials, that Reagan made back-door negotiations with Iran to delay the release of American hostages taken by the Iranians at the American embassy in Teheran until the day of Reagan's inauguration, again in exchange for weapons funneled through Israel.

Unquestionably, this arms for hostage deal won Reagan the presidency. It was never completely exposed because the main actor -- William Casey, Reagan's CIA director -- was conveniently dead by the time the accusations came to light.

Given the venom and vitriol Republicans are leveling at Obama over this Iran deal, how can Republicans continue to venerate someone like Ronald Reagan?

And the "He didn't know what his underlings were doing" line doesn't cut it: George H. W. Bush pardoned the officials charged in the Iran-Contra affair before their trials were complete in order to cover up Reagan's and Bush's roles in the scandal.