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 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.
And now… Iran-Contra.
Through 1987 and 1988, in Reagan’s final years in office, the real reason for concern about him might have been his mental fitness. But the concern that got front-page coverage at the time was the ‘Iran-Contra Scandal,’ which became the object of a special investigative commission and Congressional hearings that were televised live for a full 40 days.
Even at the time, the whole episode seemed too rococo to understand. For details, a good place to start is Malcolm Byrne’s book Iran-Contra. But to put it in simplest terms:
The Reagan administration did one thing that was illegal, in selling arms to Iran. This was flat-out illegal because it violated an arms embargo on Iran. The US did it, secretly, as part of a deal to free US hostages held in Lebanon.
It did another thing that was illegal, in over-pricing those weapons and then sending the profits to anti-communist “Contra” rebels in Nicaragua. This was illegal because of general shadiness, but also because Congress had passed a law specifically outlawing any such transfers to the Contras.
And multiple administration members did further illegal things, by withholding or destroying evidence, and lying about the whole affair to Congress and to everyone else.
Marine Corps officer Oliver North was running this “Iran-Contra” operation from his office in the White House, and when the news came out, he was one of many people to take the heat. His secretary, Fawn Hall, became famous at the time for her testimony about shredding documents, as ordered by North.
Fawn Hall and her lawyer, before the Iran-Contra investigative committee in 1987. (Bettman/Getty.)
Not many of Iran’s current leaders were around at that time. But many would certainly be aware of the history, and know that—as at other points in the Iran-Iraq war—they’d been double-dealt by one of America’s most highly professional national security teams. And then…
‘Remember the Vincennes!’
As mentioned in the previous dispatch, by the end of Reagan’s term, and in the late stages of the Iran-Iraq war, US Navy ships were in the Strait of Hormuz, keeping commerce open. By mistake, a warship named the USS Vincennes shot a missile at what it believed was an attacking Iranian fighter jet. Instead it struck a domestic Iranian airliner, and killed all 290 people aboard.
Remember seven weeks ago, when a US Tomahawk missile was apparently aimed at a “military” building but instead hit a school? Where it killed at least 175 Iranians, most of them children? I can’t remember when I last heard that mentioned in current US news dispatches. But it will remain part of public memory in Iran.
Same as with the Vincennes. I’ve met educated Iranians who are well familiar with US literature. At least a few of them might think of the Vincennes, and the school, and remember a famous line from a famous American book:
They were careless people. They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
III. The beginning of the end for accountability.
The Iran-Contra scandal, in all its baroque complexity, was a huge news event at the time. The televised testimony dominated the airwaves as the Watergate hearings had a dozen years before. Ronald Reagan initially denied doing anything wrong or knowing anything about this, but eventually issued a semi-mea-culpa. His approval rating dropped by 16 points. The episode darkened his final year in office.
More dramatically, the investigations by Congress and an “Independent Counsel” got results. After the Watergate revelations, dozens of Richard Nixon’s associates, including his Attorney General and Chief of Staff, did time in prison for their conspiracy and perjury. After Iran-Contra, things seemed to be moving in a similar direction, toward accountability. Fourteen Reagan administration officials were indicted, mainly for perjury and obstruction of justice. Eleven were convicted.
But in the end, none of them spent time behind bars.
Some of the reasons are complicated and off topic for now. But one main factor is directly connected to the politics of our moment. It involved pioneering abuse of one of the many flaws in US governing structure: The unlimited presidential power to pardon.
George H.W. Bush was of course Ronald Reagan’s successor as president. And he had been Reagan’s vice president through the entirety of these shifting approaches to Iran. (Though he claimed he had been “out of the loop” on Iran-Contra.)
On December 24, 1992—Christmas Eve, a moment for minimal news coverage, six weeks after Bush had lost his re-election race to Bill Clinton, four weeks before Bush’s power as president would end—Bush issued pardons to six of the most prominent Iran-Contra figures. Four, including a former National Security Advisor and an Assistant Secretary of State, had already been found guilty by juries. Two, including a former Secretary of Defense, were still awaiting trial. Several others had been senior officials at the CIA. For all of them no further accountability would come.
At the time, Bush’s pardons were seen as a scandal on top of Iran-Contra itself. The Senate Majority Leader said that Bush was “completing the cover-up” to “conceal his own role.” The NYT’s editorial board said that pardons showed “that those who lie to Congress in the name of a 'higher' policy are beyond the reach of the law.” The Independent Counsel who had been investigating Iran-Contra, Lawrence Walsh, later wrote that Bush was making a “last-ditch effort” to protect his own reputation. Polls showed that most of the public disapproved. But Bush was already on the way out. (There will be more to say about GHW Bush’s approach to Iran in office in the next installment, and of course then about his son’s as well.)
That was then. We’re now used to far grosser abuse of the pardon power, practically every day. The Iranians might not care much about the pardons aspect of the Reagan-and-beyond legacy with Iran. But if memory of Iran-Contra and the pardons were still part of American public memory, they would remind us of another deep structural flaw in our governing system, which must be repaired.
Next up: public-memory and Iran policy, from the Gulf War to the Clinton era and beyond.
The median age in the US is now 39.2 years. So most Americans were born in 1987 or later.
Plus ushering in “structural” budget deficits: During Jimmy Carter’s last year in office, the federal budget deficit went below 2% of GDP. Four years later, under Reagan, it neared 6%.
From remarks on his final day in office:
This, I believe, is one of the most important sources of America's greatness. We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people—our strength-from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation.
While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we're a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.
Like kicking off his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, then notorious as the site of Klan murders of civil rights workers. Or his frequent references to “welfare queens.”
The most godly man to hold the presidency in recent times, Jimmy Carter, did not use the words Jesus or Christ in his major speeches, starting with his inaugural address.
And I’m urging all fellow journalists literally to skip next week’s White House Correspondents Dinner, which will feature Trump, Hegseth, and others as “honored” guests. These spectacles are ethically shady at their best. There is no excuse for showing up at this one.
If you want to go miles deep into the weeds here, you can start with this Village Voice piece from 1992 by Frank Snepp. You’ll see what I mean.
Beginning with Reagan's claim that government is not the solution but the problem----a claim the GOP has been attempting to prove true ever since-----and Reagan's claim that tax reductions for the rich will "trickle down" to working Americans, we have become a proudly ignorant nation (in history, civics, democratic process, respect for one another, and any concern whatsoever for the rule of law or objective truth). We will forever be doomed to repeat history, since we collectively refuse to remember. While this is particularly true regarding our relations with Iran, it is equally true regarding our relations with the rest of the world. Today's Trump administration is full of profoundly deceitful incompetents who have no grasp of history and no actual talent or experience in the roles they were assigned to fulfill by the incompetent-in-chief. It is enough to bring tears on a daily basis.
Dismal to contemplate the disappearance of memory of the Iran-Iraq War, but why not when students struggle to come withing decades of naming the years of wars in which the US was involved.
Two notes: The AG who urged those pardons is Bill Barr, and one might add to the reading list for the October Surprise, Peter Baker, "A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election," New York Times, 18 March 2023, in which Ben Barnes recalls his "mission to the Middle East" with his "mentor," John Connolly.