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Cause and effects of the Iranian hostage crisis
Iran-contra affair
Iran-contra affair
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A. Plan of Investigation This investigation assesses the Reagan Administration and its inconsistent foreign policy in regards to Iran. The Iran-Contra Affair was a controversial crisis for the fortieth president. It involved two parts: the selling of weapons to Iran and then the siphoning of that money to Nicaragua. However, in this investigation, the situation with Iran will be more prominently discussed, rather than the Nicaraguan situation. The foreign policy pertaining to the Middle East will be analyzed for its confusion and complexity. The two sources used in this essay, The Long Road to Baghdad: A History of U.S. Foreign Policy from the 1970s to the Present by Lloyd C. Gardner and The Reagan Diaries by Ronald Reagan and edited by Douglas Brinkley will be evaluated for their origin, value, purpose, and limitations. B. Summary of Evidence Beginning with the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979, in the midst of Jimmy Carter’s second term, our relationship with Iran has been anything but healthy. Iran, at the time of the crisis, was under the radical influence of Ayatollah Khomeini. He had overrun and exiled the previous Shah who the United States had better relations with. After learning of the Shah’s fight with cancer, influential Americans convinced President Carter to permit the Shah to travel to the country to receive prominent medical care. This did not go over well in Iran and Khomeini then called for the students working at the U.S. embassy in Tehran to act on behalf of the country in response. On November 4, these “Iranian extremists” captured fifty-two American hostages.1 Carter attempted negotiations ranging from diplomacy to helicopter invasions, but nothing was accomplished. The relationship between the two countries... ... middle of paper ... ...nesh. Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader. New York: Touchstone. 1997. Gardner, Lloyd C. The Long Road to Baghdad: A History of U.S. Foreign Policy from the 1970s to the Present. New York: The New Press. 2008. Lapham, Lewis H. “Learning to Live Without a Soviet Threat,” Harper’s Magazine. (1987). Ray, Locker. “For U.S. Presidents, a Familiar Problem,” USA Today. (July 1, 2009). Reagan, Ronald. Ed. Douglas Brinkley. The Reagan Diaries. New York: HarperCollins Publisher. 2007. Rich, Alex K. “Tehran,” Our World: Iran. (2010). Taylor, Michael. “Iran-Contra Scandal Tarnished Credibility/ But Americans Forgave President After He Admitted Judgment Errors,” San Francisco Chronicle. (June 6, 2004). Walsh, Kenneth T. “Damage Control: Reagan’s Iran Contra Strategy Offers Lessons,” U.S. News & World Report .(2005).
As we move into the reelection year, the authors accuse Nancy of ensuring that Reagan hasn’t campaigned for eight months, following a “Rose Garden strategy.” But Reagan has no credible opponent for the 1984 nomination, and Walter Mondale, who will be his Democratic opponent in the general election, has not yet been nominated. So there is no need for a strategy, Rose Garden or otherwise. Of course we get the full chapter and verse on Reagan’s poor performance in his first debate with Mondale; at least we also get the report on the second debate. From there the narrative jumps to the Iran-Contra affair. A few high points — like the Berlin Wall speech in 1987 — are indeed included, but without any perspective on Reagan’s strategy, perseverance with the Soviets on arms control, or success in revitalizing the U.S. economy. Nothing is said about Reagan’s four second-term summits with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Except for a few comments that Reagan deplored Communism, this is a policy-free book, and a book
Taken Hostage by David Farber is book about the Iranian hostage crisis that occurred 1979-1981. Farber looks into the causes of the hostage crisis, both at home and abroad, relations between Iran and the United States, and what attempts were made in order to rescue the hostages. Farber wrote the book in order to give insight into an issue that is considered to be a huge blemish and embarrassment on America’s history. He looked at it from all perspectives and gave an objective overview of the conflict.
For decades, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East had depended on a friendly government in Iran. The newly appointed leader, the shah of Iran, began Westernizing the country and taking away power from the Ayatollah, powerful religious leaders. The United States poured millions of dollars into Iran’s economy and the shah’s armed forces, overlooking the rampant corruption in government and well-organized opposition. By early 1979, the Ayatollah had murdered the Shah and taken back power of the government. A group of students who took the American embassy hostage on November 4th, 1979, turned the embassy over to the religious leaders. Carter knew he must take action in order to regain the American embassy and the hostages, but with all of the military cutbacks, the rescue attempt was a complete failure and embarrassment. It took the United States 444 days to rescue the hostages. This was the final straw for many Americans, and enough to push them to the “right” side of the political spectrum, Republican.
Between the years of 1983 and 1986, the United States was involved in a series of covert operations, collectively known as the Iran-Contra Affair. These operations were at best controversial, and at worst blatantly illegal.The Iran-Contra Affair (or the Iran Contra-Scandal) revolved around the issue of foreign policy, specifically with regards to Iran and Nicaragua. In 1979, revolution in Iran resulted in a complete change in the countries relationship with the United States. Having previously been an ally of the U.S., Iran, under its new regime, had become decidedly anti-American. These changes caused a time period of unrest that lasted into the mid 1980’s between the U.S. and Iran. Stabilizing the situation in Iran was one of the key objectives that motivated many of the authorities who were ultimately responsible for the Iran-Contra Affair. In 1985, seven hostages were taken by a terrorist group in Lebanon. This terrorist group had ties with Iran. Therefore, when Iran requested that the United States sell arms to them, President Reagan saw it as a potential way of getting the hostages returned. President Reagan wanted to see them returned safely, and hoped to restore good relations between the U.S. and Iran in the process. Many members of Congress were strongly against the idea. To go through with the arms deal was in direct violation of several laws, including policies against selling arms to entities on lists of terrorists countries, or terrorist-friendly countries, (Iran was included on such lists). Additionally, in negotiating with Iran, the Reagan administration would be dealing with known “terrorists,” something Reagan was openly very against. Nevertheless, the Reagan administration granted the Iranian’s request, in spit...
Commentators whipped both Carter's arrangements to give up control of the Panama Canal and his reaction to Soviet animosity in Afghanistan by hauling out of the Olympics and completion the offer of wheat to the Russians. His acknowledgment of socialist China, which developed Nixon's China approach, and his arrangement of new arms control concurrences with the Soviets, were both condemned by moderates in the Republican Party. Yet, the most genuine emergency of Carter's administration included Iran. At the point when the Ayatollah Khomeini seized power there, the U.S. offered haven to the sickly Shah, irritated the new Iranian government, which then urged understudy aggressors to storm the American consulate and assume control fifty Americans prisoner. Carter's inadequate treatment of the tremendously broadcast prisoner emergency, and the shocking fizzled endeavor to protect them in 1980, destined his administration, despite the fact that he arranged their discharge instantly before leaving office.
The Tangled Relationship. New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1971. Flaherty, Tom. A. “What We Learned from the Bay of Pigs.” Reader’s Digest July 1963: 92-94.
The book A Concise History of U.S. Foreign Policy, by Joyce Kaufman, and the essay, American Foreign Policy Legacy by Walter Mead both acknowledge the history, and the importance of American foreign policy. The two argue that American foreign policy has always been an essential aspect of the prosperity and health of the United States. After reading these writings myself, I can agree that American foreign policy in the U.S. has always been detrimental to the success of this nation. Throughout history most Americans have had very little interest in foreign affairs, nor understood the importance. This essay will address the importance of foreign policy, why Americans have little interest in foreign affairs, and what the repercussions
The Iran-Contra Affair involved the United States, Iran, and Lebanon. The affair coincided with the Iranian hostage crisis, which promoted the United States’ actions in sending weapons to Iran. The Reagan administration decided to trade arms for hostages in hopes of successfully retrieving American hostages from Iran. Iran was at the time under the power of Ayatollah Khomeini, who had put his full support behind the hostage crisis and believed there was nothing that the United States could do to Iran. America’s only chance of rescuing the hostages was to put their support behind Iran in the Iran-Iraq War, which involved the shipment of weapons to Iran f...
Iran-contra affair is the name of a major United States foreign policy scandal in the 1980's. It involved two secret operations by the executive branch of the government. The operations were (1) the sale of military equipment to Iran, an enemy of the United States; and (2) the provision of military aid to contra rebels in Nicaragua, which Congress had banned. The two operations were connected by the use of profits from the Iranian arms sales to aid the rebels. Background.
Christopher D. O’Sullivan, Colin Powell: American Power and Intervention from Vietnam to Iraq (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), 62.
As we approach the next Presidential election the topic of American foreign policy is once again in the spotlight. In this paper, I will examine four major objectives of U.S. foreign policy that have persisted throughout the twentieth century and will discuss the effect of each on our nation’s recent history, with particular focus on key leaders who espoused each objective at various times. In addition, I will relate the effects of American foreign policy objectives, with special attention to their impact on the American middle class. Most importantly, this paper will discuss America’s involvement in WWI, WWII, and the Cold War to the anticipated fulfillment of these objectives—democracy, manifest destiny, humanitarianism, and economic expansion.
“CIA-funded coup against the secular, democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Muhammed Mossadeq, that anger and disillusionment with the U.S. spread across the region” (68). The “CIA-funded,” (68) raises red flags towards the government and the decisions they have made. The involvement in this situation caused the tension. Later Hasan exclaimed, “I condemn the actions of the U.S. government in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, without attacking my American friends in Houston, LA, or New York” (69). The previous quote explains how the U.S.’s involvement over seas has been set as priority by the government. Hasan points out in the second half of the quote that the government should also be looking at the conflict brewing at home. “America is not the American government. Nor is the U.S. border patrol” (69). This last quote puts everything the other argued in context. Hasan’s purpose was to merely show that the U.S. government has started the conflict with other countries and that the foreign policies should be changed instead of being unlawful. Mentioning that the government the citizens are a separate entity only reassures to the readers than Hasan is not insulting or degrading America as a
Per this writer, at the beginning of his government Jimmy Carter had been governor of a southern state with no national or international involvement. Nevertheless, while having his own foreign policy goals. Carter believed in the rule of law in international affairs and in the principle of self-determination for all people. Furthermore, he wanted the United States to take the lead in encouraging universal human rights. Carter believed that American power should be exercised carefully and that the United States should avoid military interventions as much as possible. Thus, he wanted that American relations with the Soviet Union would continue to expand, and that the two nations could come to economic and arms control agreements that would diminish Cold War tensions. Carter's
Watson, Stephanie. "Iranian Hostage Crisis." Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence and Security. Ed. K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 158-60. U.S. History in Context. Web. 18 Apr. 2014.
It is somehow strange for today’s reader to find out that the situation with America’s foreign affairs hasn’t changed much. As some clever people have said, “The History book on the shelf is always repeating itself.” Even after nineteen years, Americans think of themselves as citizens of the strongest nation in the world. Even after the September the 11th. Even after Iraq. And Afghanistan.