Why why was the Reagan Administration sale of weapons to Iran damaging for Ronald Reagan's image?

Answer 1

The u.s. illegally used the money from the sales to fund Nicaraguan rebels

Answer 2

One reason is because the United States government publicly supported Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War. The secret sale of arms to Iran made it appear as if the Reagan Administration was propping up both sides of an extremely bloody war that lasted almost eight years and cost approximately 500,000 military casualties and 100,000 civilian deaths. The other major reason is that this sale was both for the release of hostages in Lebanon, as well as to make money to help fund the Contras in Nicaragua, a right-wing terrorist group that committed numerous human rights violations while trying to overthrow the socialist party in charge, the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Both of these motives were criticized heavily in the media, and the overall scandal is known as the Iran-Contra Affair.

Answer 3

Reagan said that he would never deal with terrorists, that doing so would only produce more terrorism. However the arms deals with Iran appears to be the result of trading hostages for arms. There was also a scandal about whether the money went to support the Contras in Nicaragua and what Reagan knew about it.

Answer 4

US illegally used money from the sales to fund Nicaraguan rebels

Answer 5

Because it showed him to be an unscrupulous double-dealer and also very corrupt. At the time of the 'Iran-Contra Affair' as it is known, the Iran-Iraq War was still going on. America was supposed to be propping up Iraq to prevent the spread of fundamentalist Islamic extremism against the West- Washington disliked Saddam Hussein's brutal regime, but regarded it as being the lesser of two evils, and it was within US interests to keep Iraq under Hussein as the dominant regional power. What Reagan did was to secretly sell US arms to Iran, in defiance of a Senate boycott prohibiting such a move, and use the money raised from the sales to arm the right-wing Contra rebels in Nicaragua, who were fighting to topple the Socialist Sandinista Government of President Daniel Ortega. This showed Reagan up to be defying the Senate boycott, betraying Iraq's trust in the US, and also to be improperly meddling and influencing foreign affairs of a separate sovereign nation. Nicaragua is so small a country in comparison to the US that, even if it did have a Socialist Government, there's no way that it could have proved to be a strategic threat to the United States- even if other surrounding Central American states were persuaded to turn to Socialism as well, it still would have been no danger to America, as the ethos was based on radical democratic Socialism and not Communism as practiced by Cuba. There would have been no danger of the Soviet Union seeking to use Nicaragua or any other Latin American country as a strategic proxy, as Kruschev did with Cuba, especially given the fact that by then, Mikhail Gorbachev was in power in the USSR and did not want to initiate or antagonise the USA in any way. Reagan's main brokers in the shady deals were Admiral Poindexter of the US Navy, and army Colonel Oliver North- at the Senate enquiry into the events, which took place in 1986 /87, both men stated that they had acted upon their own initiative, which they may well have done, but it wouldn't have been possible for them to have done so without The White House knowing about it and tacitly turning a blind eye to their activities. Reagan used Presidential Immunity to escape prosecution himself. SO, Reagan may not have been directly leading the arms deals himself, but he almost certainly knew about them and deliberately looked the other way.

This position on the part of the US Administration may have antagonised Saddam Hussein's feelings towards the US and resulted in his invasion of Kuwait 3 years later, perhaps feeling that he didn't need or want to 'keep in' with Washington any longer.

Answer 6

The US illegally used the money from the sales to fund Nicaraguan rebels