What We Don't Know, Can Kill Us: Part 2.
Ronald Reagan's legacy lives on in many ways, good and bad. But Americans have forgotten too much about what he did with, and to, Iran. Here's why that matters.
In the mid-1980s, this was one of the most recognizable faces in the world. In 1987, then-USMC Lt. Col. Oliver North was the star witness during 40 days of televised Congressional hearings about the “Iran-Contra” scandal, which led to indictments of 14 Reagan administration officials, and convictions for 11. In today’s US, the episode is barely mentioned or remembered. Not so in Iran. (Photo Bettman/Getty.)
This post is the promised Part 2 follow up to my preceding item, about the gaps between one country and another in “public memory,” or how people think about their country’s place in the world. As events have unfolded in these past few days, I realize there’s a lot more to cover on the US-Iran version of this gap than will fit into just one installment. So there will be at least one more entry in this series.
This post takes us through the eight years of Ronald Reagan’s time in office, and the transition to what came afterwards.
Why so much about Reagan? Because the more I looked back on it, the clearer it seemed that his time as president offers the starkest illustration of the US/Iran memory gap in nearly 80 years. (That is, since the US-UK coup that removed Iran’s elected prime minister in 1953, an event that is common knowledge in Iran but rarely mentioned in the US.)
Ronald Reagan has been dead for more than 20 years, and out of office for close to 40. That’s long enough that most of today’s Americans have no personal memory of him as president.1 But Reagan is still a first-tier reference—positive and negative—in political discussions and public memory.
People think wildly different things about Reagan, as illustrated by even a very short list. People who think big tax cuts for the rich make all Americans richer, think that is why Reagan’s big tax cuts for the rich were good. People who think big tax cuts for the rich just make America more unequal, think that’s why Reagan’s big tax cuts for the rich were bad. (As a step toward the modern Age of Plutocrats, and to permanent budget deficits.2) People who think that immigrants are America’s superpower cite Reagan’s positive and welcoming speech on that theme.3 People who see Reagan as the tone-setter for today’s resentment-driven GOP still recall his use of racist political dog-whistles.4
This kind of list—things Americans still remember about Reagan—could go on forever. The point for now is that people are still talking about him, and that memory of his record should include more of his consequential actions about Iran. Those in Iran’s current leadership surely remember some major events of the 1980s. Those in current MAGA leadership don’t seem to have a clue.
I’ll set this up in three sections. First, a little more about the whole issue of “public memory,” with some very recent examples of how deep this problem is on the US side.
Then, a short list of some major Reagan-era actions that are largely forgotten in the US but resonate in Iran today.
And finally, an under-appreciated way in which Reagan’s Iran dealings led to one of America’s deepest, ongoing domestic problems.
I. When does ‘history’ begin? The different stories we tell ourselves.
As a reminder, by history I mean scholars’ best-available-evidence about what happened in the past, and why, and with what consequences. Of course scholars exist to find new angles on the what-and-why of past events. But there’s a certain baseline agreement on the major events that must be noted.
And by public memory, I mean the stories that families, religious or ethnic groups, and entire nations tell about their own past. These have always varied. School children in Russia hear a different version of “who really beat the Nazis” than do school children in the US. I have seen first-hand how starkly at odds “public memory” of the 1930s and 1940s is in mainland China, as compared with Japan—and in Japan, as compared with South Korea, and so on. This happens everywhere.
Most of these disagreements turn on “who started this?” disputes. Which are just another way of asking: When does “history” begin? We’ve seen new evidence of the enormous gap on this point between MAGA and Iran.
Do we count back 47 years? Or 73? Or one century? Or five?
As mentioned last time, Trump and his team—notably Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, and JD Vance, and notably not JCS Chief Daniel Caine or other senior military officials—believe they are sounding like history professors when they say they are “finishing the fight that Iran started 47 years ago.” This refers to the capture of US diplomats held hostage for more than a year in Tehran, during the anti-Shah Islamic revolution in 1979.
Many Iranians, by contrast, would say that they’re continuing a fight that the US (and UK) started 73 years ago. That would be in 1953, with the coup that ousted Mohammad Mosaddegh as prime minister and replaced him with the more Western-compliant Shah.
Some people in Iran would look back more than a century. These are not people on the street, I assume, but scholars for sure, and probably those in roles comparable to Hegseth, Rubio, or Vance. This version of history’s clock would start in the early 1920s, when the Treaty of Versailles and other post-WWI settlements left Britain as the dominant power over the ancient kingdom of Persia. This WWI-centric timeline is laid out in David Fromkin’s indispensable A Peace to End All Peace.
And perhaps some of Iran’s leaders see today’s conflicts as beginning much earlier than that, from the 1500s onward, through the centuries when Persia’s rulers negotiated an ever-shifting buffer-state strategy among the other ambitious Great Powers in their vicinity. At different times these included Russia, the UK, France, and others, plus Ottoman potentates—all of which shaped circumstances for today’s Iran.
From interviews over the years, I know that professional American diplomats can discuss these varying timelines of forces that made Iran what it has become. I doubt that many MAGA figures could even tell you what the Ottoman Empire was, and whether it included Persia. (Answer: No.)
The point here is not which timeline is “correct” or complete: MAGA’s 47 years, or Iran’s many variations of the “long view.” It is that today’s US officials show no evidence of grasping the very first principle of negotiation—and of collaboration, and of conflict. Namely, trying to imagine how the world looks through the other side’s eyes.
And what if we try to count back more than 2000 years?
Bizarrely, in recent weeks, some MAGA officials have tried to dip “deeper” into relevant history. Alas, they have done so in ways that only make them seem shallower:
-Pete Hegseth, no one’s idea of an angelic figure, explicitly likened the rescue of a downed F-15 crew member to the Easter miracle of Christ’s resurrection. This was just before Donald Trump circulated the notorious image of himself as Jesus. Both references reached back into history, but not in ways likely to endear them to Iran. (Or anyone else.)
Islam of course recognizes Jesus as a prophet, but not as a prop. Indeed, in what sounds like an Onion story but actually occurred, the president of Iran (!) took to Elon Musk’s X (!!), to send a message addressed to the Pope (!!!), declaring that “the desecration of Jesus, the prophet of peace and brotherhood, is not acceptable to any free person. (!!!!) I wish you glory by Allah.”
-The recent Catholic convert JD Vance has scoldingly warned the first American-born Pope to “be careful” when offering his thoughts about Christian Gospel. Trump himself posted that the Pope was “soft on crime.” This was part of what Iran’s president was responding to.
-And last week Hegseth offered another glimpse of his Biblical-era knowledge by angrily likening skeptical members of the Pentagon press corps to the Pharisees, who in the Bible are reported as casting doubt on Jesus, while in a synagogue.
Let’s skip past the dog-whistle aspects of the Pharisees comparison— delivered to a media audience, and coming from a man who routinely concludes Pentagon prayers by invoking “our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” and referring to “Christ the King.” In case you are wondering, the names Jesus and Christ do not appear in the US Constitution or the Declaration of Independence.5
And let’s skip past the literal insanity of Trump portraying himself as Jesus, and the operational stupidity of any president getting into a public fight with any Pope on the meaning of Christian gospel.6
The point of this set-up is: The only thing worse than not knowing any history, is relying on a comic-book or action-movie version of it.
II. What Reagan did.
Here are parts of the Reagan-era heritage as remembered in Iran, starting with the one that is still vaguely familiar to some Americans.
The ‘October Surprise.’
This comes first in any chronicle of Reagan actions, because it involved his first moments in office.
As mentioned last time, I don’t claim independent expertise on this theme. But both Gary Sick, whom I knew and worked with in the Carter White House, and Craig Unger, whom I know in DC journalism, have made strong prima-facie cases that the 1980 Reagan campaign team cooperated with the Ayatollah’s leadership in Iran, to be sure the American hostages stayed captive as long as Jimmy Carter was in power. And that both sides did so specifically to hurt Carter’s re-election chances and thus empower Reagan.
As it happened, Iran released the hostages just moments after Ronald Reagan was sworn in. What a coincidence! Sick argues the case for secret Reagan-Iran collaboration in October Surprise, and Unger in his recent Den of Spies.
Some Iran experts have disagreed7. My point is that from Day One of his time in office, in ways rarely mentioned these days in the US, Iran was more than just another country to Reagan and his team.
And—whatever the ultimate truth about the October Surprise—the secrecy of the alleged dealings matched many subsequent, proven interactions between Reagan and Iran. As in….
The Iran-Iraq war.
Through nearly all of Ronald Reagan’s time in office, the longest conventional war of the 20th century was underway. The death toll likely exceeded 500,000. It was carnage.
Officially, Reagan’s administration and the US could not favor either side: Not Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and not the Ayatollah’s Iran. Officially, the US opposed them both. And the Reagan team had a lot of other things to handle in those years, including Soviet warfare in Afghanistan.
But backstage, the US was an ongoing secret participant, and shifted back and forth between the sides. Initially it helped Iraq—Saddam’s Iraq!!!—with intel and other support, mainly to contain Iran’s influence in the region. Gradually, and again in secret, it shifted diplomatic and military support to Iran, for reasons we’ll get to. Then near the end of Reagan’s time, it tilted toward Iraq again—and among the reasons was protecting oil-shipment lanes from possible Iranian blockades. Gee, does this ring a bell?
Here’s my “public memory” point: Few people in today’s United States could tell you why or when this enormously bloody warfare took place. Few would recall it happening on Ronald Reagan’s watch. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it mentioned in retrospectives on the Reagan era.
But today’s Iranian leaders would remember it very differently: As an example of US officials operating in the dark, saying one thing and doing another, and switching “loyalties” whenever expedient. And this was under a generally popular US president, surrounded by genuinely competent advisors and staff.