Jan 20, 1981
As Ronald Regan is being sworn into office as POTUS, the US hostages in Iran were released.
It’s obvious that the hostage release was timed so that it wouldn’t happen under President Carter. One last chance to thumb their nose at Jimmy.
What would have happened if Carter had won a second term in office? Would the prisoners have been released earlier, because there was no reason to hold them until someone else held office? Would they have been held longer to spite Carter?
I just barely remember the Hostage Crisis, so I can’t answer this one myself.
I don’t have an informed answer. But my opinion is yes, they would have. Iran got about all the mileage out of the hostage crisis what they were going to. I don’t know what they had to gain by continuing.
I’m wondering why they timed it the way they did? Did they really think that a President who had been in office all of a few minutes was responsible for the release? To hear the public opinion today, you’d think they did fool the public quite well (I seem to hear a lot that “Reagan was responsible for the hostages’ release”, even from non-conservatives), but, on the other hand, it is also well known that Reagan suffered from low approval rating numbers his first few years. You’d think something like that early in his presidency would buoy his numbers like 9/11 did for Bush’s …
it’s also worth noting that, in 1980, Ronald Reagan was widely perceived as a trigger happy warmonger.
Over time, Reagan proved VERY willing (indeed, TOO willing) to cut deals with Iran- but when he was first elected, the Iranians may have feared him just as much as the American Left did.
I doubt they would have been released as quickly, but yeah…I think eventually they would have released them. I think they were scared to death Reagan would nuke them or something if they didn’t release the hostages.
Here’s a chart of Reagan’s approval ratings. I think they dropped in the first year more due to the economy than anything else.
The Iranians hated Carter, but I get the sense that it was as a symbol of the U.S. more than any particular action he took as president. The Shah was dead by that time and the only thing left to negotiate was the unfreezing of Iranian assets in the U.S. After that was settled, the hostage-takers only had to save as much face as possible, and timed the release after the inauguration as one last jab at Carter.
Reagan stayed out of the issue as much as possible. It suited his campaign at the time for the whole issue, and the blame for it, to be Carter’s alone. (For that matter, it suited Khomeni to ride the public fervor in Iran but have no direct involvement.)
They’d have been released anyway. To give Reagan any credit for it is laughable. Didn’t stop the Republican candidates in 2008 from trying.
Yeah, you have to be pretty unknowledgable about the whole episode to think “OMG Reagan was sworn in and 20 minutes later them Eye-ranians released the hostages cuz they was scared of Ronnie Ray-gun!”
There were literally months of negotiations going on, culminating in the Algiers Accords which were signed right before the inauguration. The breakthrough in the negotiations came before the election, when the Iranian government finally got serious and came up with some proposals on what they actually wanted. From that point, it was just getting all the details worked out (which was no small feat, really) but the hostage release was inevitable.
The hostages would have been released if Bobo the Clown were sworn in on January 20, 1981, because as Robot Arm puts it, it was one last jab at Carter. It had nothing to do with Reagan.
If Carter had been re-elected, the hostages would have been released around the same time.
If Carter had been re-elected there was almost no chance that the hostages would have been released during his second term.
Carter was a very well known quantity to the Iranians. He had repeatedly demonstrated himself to be a weak, flaccid, pusillanimous and ineffective man.
Reagan, on the other hand, was not someone whose actions could be predicted with any confidence, and the risk of a blockade, particularly of refined oil which Iran was, and still is, short of, was probably too great a risk to take from an Iranian point of view.
With Carter out, the Ayatollah had gotten as much as he could out of holding the hostages. So they let them go as one last slap at someone who had tried to use military force (with a disastrous lack of success - Carter tried to micro-manage the effort as he did in much of the rest of his tenure).
Had Carter been re-elected, they could have used the hostages to beat him up and make him look bad for a while longer.
I sometimes wonder if this played any role in making North and Poindexter think they could negotiate with the Iranians and therefore helped trigger Iran-Contra.
There were conspiracy theories at the time that Reagan’s campaign made a deal with the Iranians to hold onto the hostages until after the election. The biggest pusher of that theory was former NSC member Gary Sick. But investigations from both houses of Congress concluded that the allegations were baseless.
IIRC Reagan was negotiating for the release of the hostages while he was still a candidate. It was probably coordinated to happen as soon as Reagan took office.
"After twelve years of mixed media attention, both houses of the US Congress held separate inquiries and concluded that the allegations lacked supporting documentation.
Nevertheless, several individuals—most notably former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, former Naval intelligence officer and National Security Council member, Gary Sick; and former Reagan/Bush campaign and White House staffer, Barbara Honegger—have stood by the allegation."
Yeah, maybe you’re right. I don’t really think that a hostage rescue would have saved Carter, it may not have been as much of a landslide but the economy probably had a LOT more to do with the election than anything else.
I also agree the timing was certainly all politics. Had Carter been re-elected they would’ve been released but later on with more negotiation required.
The Iranians knew for a long time through polls, that Carter wasn’t going to win a second term. The negotiations to release them were well underway. Carter was thought to be a “screw up” and a “wimp.” Now I don’t really agree with that but that is how he was played for in the press and the world scene.
He was an ineffective leader, is probably a better term.
So whoever came in after him, Republican or Democrat would have seen the hotages released at the same time.
Had Carter been re-elected I doubt the hostages would’ve stayed in captivity for four more years, but it would’ve take a bit longer to get them free
Yes, Reagan was tough on terrorists and never gave an inch to Islamic terrorists militarily except when he ordered the Marines to retreat from Lebanon after terrorists blew a few of the up in 1983. I can only imagine the reaction if Carter had ordered the same retreat.
And Reagan never negotiated with terrorists either, especially the Iranian regime which we all know is the central banker of terroism, except when he was caught doing so and had to admit it on national TV in what was possibly my favourite Reagan moment :
“Let’s start with the part that is the most controversial. A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms [to the central bankers of terrorism] for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.”
So the chance that candidate Reagan opened back channel negotiations with the Iranians to delay the release of the hostages until after he was elected was obviously nonexistent, and the amazing coincidence of the hostages being shown on national US TV disembarking from a Pan-Am jet in New York on a split screen that was also showing Reagan being sworn in as prez is just an amazing coincidence.
