#Iran
15 entries tagged Iran.
People (5)
- Albert Hakim Iranian-American businessman who co-directed the Iran-Contra Enterprise with Richard Secord, managing its finances and negotiating with Iranian officials before pleading guilty in 1989 to supplementing Oliver North's salary.
- Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was a senior Iranian cleric and politician who served as Speaker of Parliament during the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages negotiations, where he is identified as the principal Iranian official who publicly broke the story in November 1986; he later served as President of Iran 1989-1997 and is a central figure in the October Surprise and Iran-Contra subjects.
- Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was the Shia cleric who led Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and served as the Islamic Republic's first Supreme Leader until his death in 1989; his government's hostage-taking and arms dealings made him a central figure in the Iran-Contra and October Surprise controversies.
- Gary Sick Gary Sick was the principal White House aide for Iran on the Carter National Security Council during the 1979-1981 hostage crisis, and subsequently authored October Surprise (1991), the book that launched congressional investigations into allegations that Reagan's campaign secretly negotiated with Iran to delay the hostages' release.
- Mehdi Karrubi Mehdi Karrubi was an Iranian cleric and senior political figure who served as Speaker of the Iranian Parliament (1989-1992, 2000-2004) and later claimed that he had knowledge of negotiations between the Reagan campaign and Iranian representatives in 1980 that delayed the hostage release; he was later placed under house arrest following the 2009 Green Movement.
Organizations (2)
- Iran-Israel Joint Committee The Iran-Israel Joint Committee was established in the fall of 1980 by Menachem Begin 1, who ordered Yehoshua Sagi and Nachum Admoni to appoint it.
- SAVAK SAVAK (Sazman-e Ettelaat va Amniyat-e Keshvar) was the Iranian secret police established in 1957 with CIA and Mossad assistance; it protected the Shah's regime through surveillance, torture, and assassination of political opponents until it was dissolved following the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Programs (1)
- Operation AJAX Operation AJAX was the CIA's code name for the August 1953 covert operation that overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, restoring the Shah to full power in collaboration with British MI6 (Operation Boot), and establishing the direct precedent for CIA-backed coups that shaped Cold War policy and Iran's trajectory toward the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Events (5)
- Hashemi Sting The Hashemi Sting was a 1986 U.S. Customs undercover operation targeting illegal arms sales to Iran, prosecuted by U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani's Southern District of New York office, which resulted in indictments of arms dealers including former Israeli general Avraham Bar-Am; it intersected directly with the Iran-Contra network and the October Surprise investigations, and its key informant Cyrus Hashemi died in London under disputed circumstances shortly after the sting concluded.
- Iran-Contra Affair Political scandal involving the secret sale of arms to Iran to fund the Nicaraguan Contras in violation of the Boland Amendment, leading to indictments of multiple CIA and NSC officials.
- Iran-Iraq War The Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) was an eight-year conflict in which Western powers, the CIA, and Gulf states covertly supported Saddam Hussein's Iraq while the Reagan administration simultaneously ran secret arms to Iran; the war produced massive casualties, extensive use of chemical weapons against Iranian and Kurdish populations, and the arms procurement networks at the center of the Iran-Contra affair.
- Iranian Revolution 1979 popular uprising that overthrew Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, establishing an Islamic republic and fundamentally reshaping Middle Eastern geopolitics.
- October Surprise The October Surprise allegation holds that William J. Casey and other figures in Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign secretly negotiated with Iranian representatives to delay the release of 52 American hostages past Election Day in exchange for promises of arms and release of frozen Iranian assets, with the hostages released minutes after Reagan was sworn in on January 20, 1981.
Concepts (1)
- TOW Missile The BGM-71 TOW is a U.S. Army crew-portable anti-tank guided missile system developed by Hughes Aircraft that was the primary weapons system transferred to Iran through Israeli intermediaries in the August-September 1985 phase of the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scheme.
Places (1)
- Tehran Tehran is the capital of Iran and the site of the November 4, 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy, triggering the 444-day hostage crisis that anchors the October Surprise allegations, as well as the political center from which the Islamic Republic directed the arms-for-hostages negotiations that became the Iran-Contra affair.