World News Korner

The treasonous actions of the Right Wing's hero Ronald Reagan, and how it made Iran the "dangerous threat" the Republicans still use to frighten Americans today.

Courtesy of Truthout: In 1980 Carter thought he had reached a deal with newly-elected Iranian President Abdolhassan Bani-Sadr over the release of the fifty-two hostages held by radical students at the American Embassy in Tehran.

Bani-Sadr was a moderate and, as he explained in an editorial for The Christian Science Monitor earlier this year, had successfully run for President on the popular position of releasing the hostages:

"I openly opposed the hostage-taking throughout the election campaign.... I won the election with over 76 percent of the vote.... Other candidates also were openly against hostage-taking, and overall, 96 percent of votes in that election were given to candidates who were against it [hostage-taking]."

Carter was confident that with Bani-Sadr's help, he could end the embarrassing hostage crisis that had been a thorn in his political side ever since it began in November of 1979.

But Carter underestimated the lengths his opponent in the 1980 Presidential election, California Governor Ronald Reagan, would go to screw him over.

Behind Carter's back, the Reagan campaign worked out a deal with the leader of Iran's radical faction - Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini - to keep the hostages in captivity until after the 1980 Presidential election.

This was nothing short of treason. The Reagan campaign's secret negotiations with Khomeini - the so-called "October Surprise" - sabotaged Carter and Bani-Sadr's attempts to free the hostages. And as Bani-Sadr told The Christian Science Monitor in March of this year, they most certainly "tipped the results of the [1980] election in Reagan's favor."

Not surprisingly, Iran released the hostages on January 20, 1981, at the exact moment Ronald Reagan was sworn into office.

The "October Surprise" emboldened the radical forces inside Iran. A politically weakened Bani-Sadr was overthrown in June of 1981 and replaced with Mohammed Ali Rajai - a favorite of Khomeini's. These radical forces today are represented by people like former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, hard-liners who oppose any deal with the United States and, like Khomeini in the 1980s, will jump at any chance to discredit the current moderate presidency of Hassan Rouhani.

The October Surprise also led to the deaths of thousands of innocent people around the world, and in Central America in particular. Reagan took money from the Iranians and used that money to kill nuns in Nicaragua.

But those are just the most obvious results of the October Surprise. Again, if Carter were able to free the hostages like he and Bani-Sadr had planned, Carter would have won re-election. After all, he was leading in most polls in the months leading up to the election. And if Reagan were never elected, America would be a much more progressive nation.

I am sure that many of you are old enough to remember when all of this went down, however with the President's new deal with Iran on their nuclear program taking such heat from the Right Wing it is important to remember that they have a history of sabotaging deals with Iran, and that we should keep a wary on them at all times.

Could you just imagine how different the world would have been if Carter's deal had been implemented? How much better our relationship would have been with Iran, as well as Iraq and Pakistan?

How many American lives could have been saved if Iran had not been manipulated by the Republicans into becoming the bogeyman to replace the newly democratized Russia?

And while we are on the topic it should be remembered that not only were the Republicans instrumental in getting the Shah of Iran into power in the first place, their were also instrumental in laying the groundwork for his overthrow and the eventual fundamentalist Islamic uprising that saw those American hostages taken in 1979.

Remember "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." We are close to creating a new deal with Iran which might go a long way toward quelling violence in the Middle East, and laying the groundwork for a future where terrorism is a thing of the past, and none of that works in the Republican's favor.

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