Secret Swiss bank accounts were set up. Special envoys, with assumed identities, travelled to hostile nations. Arms were air-dropped for rebel guerrillas.
And a plane with American nationals was hijacked. The Iran-Contra case, one of the biggest political scandals in American history, involved all the above and missile supply to Iran by the US. That was 40 years before US President Donald Trump decided to join the Iran-Israel war and .
What is most interesting is that the US followed Israel’s lead in the dealings, using its network of arms smugglers and bank accounts, according to reports by Time magazine. It is an altogether different matter that it was an Israeli gambit that would fail.
The purpose of the US’ sale of weapons to Iran was two-fold – get the American hostages released with Iranian help, and use the funds to assist the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
By then, the US-backed regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in Iran had been overthrown, and an Islamic Republic had been established by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 .
The newly-established Islamic Republic was fighting a war with Saddam Hussein-led Iraq, which was unnerved by the setting up of a Shia power centre in its immediate neighbourhood. Saddam, fearing that Khomeini would influence the Iraqi Shias against his Ba’ath Party, initiated the war against Iran.
Running low on arms and ammunition and spare parts for US-made systems, Iran looked for help.
Tehran had made millions of dollars in payments to the US during the Shah regime and got military hardware, including F14 Tomcat jets, M60 tanks, F4 Phantoms, and helicopters and missiles.
Immediately after the Shah’s regime was toppled, US-Iran diplomatic ties snapped, Iranian funds were frozen, and an arms embargo was imposed.
“Throughout 1981 and 1982, Israel provided Iran with modest amounts of spare parts, jet-plane tires and brakes, ammunition, and radar equipment. The Israelis reportedly set up Swiss bank accounts to handle the financial end of the deals,” according to a Time magazine report from December 1986, when the Iran-Contra case blew up.
The US was then being led by another Republican President, Ronald Reagan, who served from 1981 to 1989.
Israel believed that its arms supply to Iran in time of crisis would get it closer to the Iranian military, the leaders of which were from a moderate faction, and would topple Khomeini’s regime or capture power after his death.
Israel saw the Iranian army as a distinct entity from the anti-West Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
That bet on Iran army wouldn’t pay off but the US would end up using its set-up to further its cause.
THE HIJACKING OF TWA FLIGHT 847 BY HEZBOLLAH FIGHTERS
On June 14, 1985, TWA Flight 847 with 153 people onboard was hijacked by Lebanese Hezbollah terrorists armed with grenades and pistols during a routine flight from Athens to Rome, according to the FBI website.
The Hezbollah hijackers commandeered the plane to Beirut, Lebanon, demanding the release of Lebanese fighters in Israeli captivity. They expected the plane to have Israeli passengers, but finding none, they turned their focus on Americans.
On June 15, the hijackers decided to send out a strong message and killed a 23-year-old US Navy diver and threw his body on the tarmac.
While most of the hostages were released in stages, 39 were set free only after 17 days, and after a botched arms delivery by Israel that was intercepted by the Revolutionary Guards.
“White House officials hoped the arms transfers through Israel would help secure the release of seven US hostages being held in Lebanon,” according to a 2013 Politico report.
It recounted how Reagan defended the arms sale to Iran in a speech on November 13, 1986, 10 days after it was exposed by Lebanese newspaper Al-Shiraa.
“My purpose was… to send a signal that the United States was prepared to replace the animosity between [the US and Iran] with a new relationship… The most significant step [for progress in ties] which Iran could take, we indicated, would be to use its influence in Lebanon to secure the release of all hostages held there,” Reagan said in the nationally-televised speech.
A week later, Reagan retracted his public statement, denying sale of weapons as part of the arms-for-hostages deal.
REAGAN AIDES USED IRAN FUNDS TO SUPPORT NICARAGUA CONTRAS
The money generated from the sale of weapons to Iran was used to fund the Contras, a rebel group, fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua in Central America.
This too went against the US official stand. The US Congress had passed the Boland Amendment, prohibiting military aid to the Contras.
Congressional investigators, The Washington Post reported in 1987, “believe that a total of $10.5 million was skimmed from the Iran arms deals to support Nicaraguan rebels”.
Key figures in the case included senior Reagan administration officials like National Security Council staff member Oliver North, National Security Advisor John Poindexter, and CIA Director William Casey.
WHAT ARMS WERE SUPPLIED AS PART OF IRAN-CONTRA DEAL
By the time the covert sales were discovered, more than 1,500 missiles had been shipped to Iran, according to a report by American public broadcaster PBS.
According to another 1987 Washington Post report, 2,008 TOW anti-tank missiles and spare parts for the HAWK anti-aircraft missile system were part of the supplies to Iran.
The TOW missile is a long-range, anti-tank guided missile, while the HAWK is an all-weather, ground-to-air missile system.
Though it isn’t clear, limited quantities of radar systems, ammunition components, and potentially aircraft spare parts might also have been supplied to Iran, mostly to shore up the Shah-era American systems that the Islamic Republic was using during its war against Iraq.
Though the shipments weren’t massive, they helped when Iran was suffering from battlefield attrition and equipment fatigue.
The arrival of advanced US weapons must have boosted the morale and stabilised key fronts. TOW missiles, in particular, helped Iran blunt multiple Iraqi offensives between 1985 and 1986.
Why the Iran-Contra case, the biggest scandal of the Reagan regime, is also important is because it highlighted the balance-of-power issue between the President’s office and the legislature.
This is very similar to the questions being raised on Trump’s powers for getting the US into a new war in the Middle East by striking nuclear sites in Iran without wider bipartisan discussions.
Though Reagan avoided direct criminal charges, the covert arms supply and the funnelling of funds in the Iran-Contra scandal damaged his public image and legacy. This was also the only instance when the US ended up arming the Islamic Republic of Iran, and helped it in a war situation.