The Iran–Contra affair or Iran–Contra scandal (Persian: ماجرای ایران-کنترا; Spanish: Caso Irán-Contra), also referred to as the Iran Initiative or Contragate, was a political scandal in the United States that centered on arms trafficking to Iran between 1981 and 1986, facilitated by senior officials of the Reagan administration. The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras, an anti-Sandinista rebel group in Nicaragua. Under the Boland Amendments, a series of laws passed by Congress and signed by Ronald Reagan, further funding of the Contras by legislative appropriations was prohibited by Congress, but the Reagan administration continued funding them secretly using non-appropriated funds.
The administration's justification for the arms shipments was that they were part of an attempt to free seven U.S. hostages being held in Lebanon by Hezbollah, an Islamist paramilitary group connected to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The idea to exchange arms for hostages was proposed by Manucher Ghorbanifar, an expatriate Iranian arms dealer. Some within the Reagan administration hoped the sales would influence Iran to get Hezbollah to release the hostages.
After the Lebanese Magazine Ash-Shiraa reported on the weapon dealings in November 1986, it broke international news, prompting Reagan to appear on national television. He claimed that while the weapons transfers had indeed occurred, the U.S. did not trade arms for hostages. The investigation was impeded when large volumes of documents relating to the affair were destroyed or withheld from investigators by Reagan administration officials. In March 1987, Reagan made a further nationally televised address, saying he was taking full responsibility for the affair and stating that "what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages."
The affair was investigated by Congress and by the three-person, Reagan-appointed Tower Commission. Neither investigation found evidence that President Reagan himself knew of the extent of the multiple programs. Additionally, U.S. deputy attorney general Lawrence Walsh was appointed independent counsel in December 1986 to investigate possible criminal actions by officials involved in the scheme. In the end, several dozen administration officials were indicted, including Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North. Eleven convictions resulted, some of which were vacated on appeal. The rest of those indicted or convicted were all pardoned in the final days of the presidency of George H. W. Bush, who had been vice president at the time of the affair. Only one Iran–Contra defendant, Thomas G. Clines, served a prison sentence; all of the others either received probation or were pardoned while their trials were still pending. Former Independent Counsel Walsh noted that, in issuing the pardons, Bush appeared to be preempting being implicated himself by evidence that came to light during the Weinberger trial, and that there was a pattern of "deception and obstruction" by Bush, Weinberger, and other senior Reagan administration officials. Walsh submitted his final report on 4 August 1993 and later wrote an account of his experiences as counsel, Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up.
Background
Prior to the Iranian Revolution, the U.S. was the largest seller of arms to Iran under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and the vast majority of the weapons that the Islamic Republic of Iran inherited in January 1979 were U.S.-made. To maintain this arsenal, Iran required a steady supply of spare parts to replace those broken and worn out.
In November 1979, after Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans hostage, U.S. President Jimmy Carter imposed an arms embargo on Iran. In September 1980, Iraq invaded Iran and Iran desperately needed weapons and spare parts for its current weaponry. After Ronald Reagan took office as president on 20 January 1981 and the hostages were released, he vowed to continue Carter's policy of blocking arms sales to Iran on the grounds that Iran supported what the U.S. viewed as acts of terrorism overseas. The U.S. also feared that an Iranian victory in their war with Iraq might help Ayatollah Khomeini in his goal of "exporting the Islamic revolution" throughout the other states in the Persian Gulf region, which would present a major threat to Western access to oil and would likely leave the Soviet Union in a position than the U.S. to exploit any potentially ensuing instability, politically or militarily.
However, a group of senior Reagan administration officials in the Senior Interdepartmental Group held a meeting on 21 July 1981, where they agreed that the arms embargo would likely have little impact on the outcome of the war, while also opening the door for Iran to fall into the Soviet sphere of influence, as the Kremlin could sell Iran weapons if the U.S. would not. The conclusion was that the U.S. should start selling arms to Iran as soon as it was politically possible.
In the spring of 1983, the U.S. launched Operation Staunch, a wide-ranging diplomatic effort to persuade other nations all over the world not to sell arms or spare parts for weapons to Iran. This was at least part of the reason why the Iran–Contra affair proved so humiliating for the U.S. when the story first broke in November 1986 that the U.S. itself was selling arms to Iran.
Funding the Contras
At the same time that the U.S. government was considering its options on selling arms to Iran, Contra militants based in Honduras were waging a guerrilla war to topple the Sandinista revolutionary government of Nicaragua. Almost from the time he took office in 1981, a major goal of the Reagan administration was the overthrow of the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua and to support the Contra rebels.
The Reagan administration's policy toward Nicaragua produced a major clash between the executive and legislative branches as Congress sought to limit, if not curb altogether, the ability of the White House to support the Contras. Direct U.S. funding of the Contras insurgency was made illegal through the Boland Amendment, the name given to three U.S. legislative amendments between 1982 and 1984 aimed at limiting U.S. government assistance to Contra militants. By 1984, funding for the Contras had run out; and, in October of that year, a total ban came into effect. The second Boland Amendment, in effect from 3 October 1984 to 3 December 1985, stated:
During the fiscal year 1985 no funds available to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense or any other agency or entity of the United States involved in intelligence activities may be obligated or expended for the purpose of or which may have the effect of supporting directly or indirectly military or paramilitary operations in Nicaragua by any nation, organization, group, movement, or individual.
In violation of the Boland Amendment, senior officials of the Reagan administration continued to secretly arm and train the Contras and provide arms to Iran, an operation they called "the Enterprise". Given the Contras' heavy dependence on U.S. military and financial support, the second Boland Amendment threatened to break the Contra movement and led to President Reagan ordering in 1984 that the National Security Council (NSC) "keep the Contras together 'body and soul'", no matter what Congress voted for.
A major legal debate at the center of the Iran–Contra affair concerned the question of whether the NSC was part of the "any other agency or entity of the United States involved in intelligence activities" covered by the Boland Amendment. The Reagan administration argued it was not, and many in Congress argued that it was. The majority of constitutional scholars have asserted the NSC did indeed fall within the purview of the second Boland Amendment, though the amendment did not mention the NSC by name.
The broader constitutional question at stake was the power of Congress versus the power of the presidency. The Reagan administration argued that, because the constitution assigned the right to conduct foreign policy to the executive, its efforts to overthrow the government of Nicaragua were a presidential prerogative that Congress had no right to try to halt via the Boland Amendments. By contrast, congressional leaders argued that the constitution had assigned Congress control of the budget, and Congress had every right to use that power not to fund projects they disapproved of, such as attempting to overthrow the government of Nicaragua.
As part of the effort to circumvent the Boland Amendment, the NSC established "the Enterprise", an arms-smuggling network headed by a retired U.S. Air Force officer turned arms dealer Richard Secord that supplied arms to the Contras. It was ostensibly a private sector operation, but in fact was controlled by the NSC. To fund "the Enterprise", the Reagan administration was constantly on the look-out for funds that came from outside the U.S. government, thus not technically violating the exact phrasing of the Amendment regardless of the money's ultimate purpose. Ironically, military aid to the Contras was reinstated with congressional consent in October 1986, a month before the scandal broke.
In his 1995 memoir My American Journey, General Colin Powell, the U.S. deputy national security advisor, wrote that the weapons sales to Iran were used "for purposes prohibited by the elected representatives of the American people [...] in a way that avoided accountability to the President and Congress. It was wrong."
In 1985, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega offered to help the U.S. by allowing Panama as a staging ground for operations against the FSLN and offering to train Contras in Panama, but this would later be overshadowed by the Iran–Contra affair itself. At around the same time, the Soviet Bloc also engaged in arms deals with ideologically opponent buyers, possibly involving some of the same players as the Iran–Contra affair. In 1986, a complex operation involving East Germany's Stasi and the Danish-registered ship Pia Vesta ultimately aimed to sell Soviet arms and military vehicles to South Africa's Armscor, using various intermediaries to distance themselves from the deal. Noriega was apparently one of these intermediaries but backed out on the deal as the ship and weapons were seized at a Panamanian port. The Pia Vesta led to a small controversy, as the Panamanian and Peruvian governments in 1986 accused the U.S. and each other of being involved in the East Germany-originated shipment.
Arms sales to Iran
As reported in The New York Times in 1991, "continuing allegations that Reagan campaign officials made a deal with the Iranian Government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the fall of 1980" led to "limited investigations". However "limited", those investigations established that "Soon after taking office in 1981, the Reagan Administration secretly and abruptly changed United States policy." Secret Israeli arms sales and shipments to Iran began in that year, even as, in public, the Reagan administration presented a different face, and "aggressively promoted a public campaign [...] to stop worldwide transfers of military goods to Iran". The New York Times explains: "Iran at that time was in dire need of arms and spare parts for its American-made arsenal to defend itself against Iraq, which had attacked it in September 1980", while "Israel [a US ally] was interested in keeping the war between Iran and Iraq going to ensure that these two potential enemies remained preoccupied with each other". Major General Avraham Tamir, a high-ranking Israeli Defense Ministry official in 1981, said there was an "oral agreement" to allow the sale of "spare parts" to Iran. This was based on an "understanding" with Secretary of State Alexander Haig (which a Haig adviser denied). This account was confirmed by a former senior US diplomat with a few modifications. The diplomat claimed that "[Ariel] Sharon violated it, and Haig backed away". A former "high-level" Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official who saw reports of arms sales to Iran by Israel in the early 1980s estimated that the total was about $2 billion a year—but also said, "The degree to which it was sanctioned I don't know." Two of the key middlemen in the arms sales were Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi and former SAVAK agent Manucher Ghorbanifar.
On or about 11 June 1985, a draft National Security Decision Directive was written at the behest of National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane which called for the US to begin a rapprochement with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The paper read:
Dynamic political evolution is taking place inside Iran. Instability caused by the pressures of the Iraq-Iran war, economic deterioration and regime in-fighting create the potential for major changes inside Iran. The Soviet Union is better positioned than the U.S. to exploit and benefit from any power struggle that results in changes from the Iranian regime [...]. The U.S. should encourage Western allies and friends to help Iran meet its import requirements so as to reduce the attractiveness of Soviet assistance [...]. This includes provision of selected military equipment.
Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was highly negative, writing on his copy of McFarlane's paper: "This is almost too absurd to comment on [...] like asking Qaddafi to Washington for a cozy chat." Secretary of State George Shultz was also opposed, asking that having designated Iran a State Sponsor of Terrorism in January 1984, how could the US possibly sell arms to Iran? Only the director of the CIA William J. Casey supported McFarlane's plan to start selling arms to Iran.
In early July 1985, the historian Michael Ledeen, a consultant of National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, requested assistance from Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres for help in the sale of arms to Iran. Having talked to an Israeli diplomat David Kimche and Ledeen, McFarlane learned that the Iranians were prepared to have Hezbollah release US hostages in Lebanon in exchange for Israelis shipping Iran US weapons. Having been designated a State Sponsor of Terrorism since January 1984, Iran was in the midst of the Iran–Iraq War and could find few Western nations willing to supply it with weapons. The idea behind the plan was for Israel to ship weapons through an intermediary (identified as Manucher Ghorbanifar) to the Islamic Republic as a way of aiding a supposedly moderate, politically influential faction within the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini who was believed to be seeking a rapprochement with the US; after the transaction, the US would reimburse Israel with the same weapons, while receiving monetary benefits. McFarlane in a memo to Shultz and Weinberger wrote:
The short term dimension concerns the seven hostages; the long term dimension involves the establishment of a private dialogue with Iranian officials on the broader relations [...]. They sought specifically the delivery from Israel of 100 TOW missiles [...].