GOP Treason with Iran May Have Stolen Jimmy Carter Reelection

The release of 52 American hostages held by Iran for 444 days came the day Reagan took office.

If the claims of a high-ranking former Texas politician—with a reputation for honesty—are true, the GOP conspired with a foreign government through multiple foreign intermediaries to keep American hostages imprisoned in Iran so Ronald Reagan could defeat Jimmy Carter.

The Backdrop:

Jimmy Carter became president on January 20, 1977. His first years in office were plagued by general economic malaise, inflation and recession. Then came the Iranian Revolution, which would become the bane of Carter’s presidency.

Problems in Iran began to surface in the early 1950s when Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh convinced the Iranian Majlis to nationalize Iranian oil. The biggest loser was British Petroleum. But Mossadegh’s triumph wouldn’t last long. A consortium of Western oil companies, along with the CIA and British Intelligence, incited violence by alleged “Communists” in Iran, and then staged a four-day coup in which Mossadegh was deposed and the shah returned to full power. Mossadegh was tried and convicted of trying to destroy the monarchy and jailed for three years. Following his release, he was held under house arrest for the rest of his life.

Then, in 1963, the Shah instituted what he called the White Revolution. It began with a land reform project, supported by a plebiscite, that allocated 500,000 hectares of land to 30,000 homeless families. Then he instituted sweeping legal reforms—putting justice in the hands of secular, instead of Islamic, courts.

The White Revolution also encouraged a Westernization of attitudes towards and freedoms for women. The conservative Twelver Shia ulema deemed the loosening such strictures on women “against Iranian culture”—but what they really meant is that it took power from men and religious authorities.

Exiled since 1964 for criticizing Pahlavi, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini decried these modernization efforts—which, among other things, criminalized the veil. (Police ripped veils off women in the streets.) Meanwhile, the shah’s hated SAVAK, the secret police and intelligence service, detained, tortured and executed thousands of Iranians for criticizing the shah.

By 1978, Iranians were rioting everywhere. A theater fire—staged by an Islamist but blamed on the shah—killed hundreds. Government troops opened fire on a crowd, killing hundreds more. By year’s end, the shah’s regime was crumbling, and on the 11th of December, he fled the country.

Part of the rage against the United States came from its support of the shah as well as from the deposing of the much-beloved Mossadegh. A first attempt on the U.S. Embassy in Tehran came in the early months of 1979. Embassy staff actually surrendered; however, the Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the students to retreat.

But it wasn’t over: the crisis came to a head in October 1978, when the U.S. allowed the former shah to visit New York for cancer treatment. Students were enraged, and on November 4th, they stormed the U.S. embassy and took 78 prisoners hostage. They retained 52 of them for the next 444 days.

Yellow ribbons fluttered from gnarled tree trunks all over America. Jimmy Carter’s long nightmare had begun.

Early in 1980, it was easy to believe the crisis wouldn’t last long. Yet as winter became spring, grim realities set in: there was no sign the Americans’ return was imminent—and there was now another massive oil crisis to follow the ones of the early 1970s. Iranian oil exports plummeted. And although Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries ramped up production to 96% of what it had been with Iran’s help, no one could prevent the global oil panic and the profiteering that plagued the industry. Prices skyrocketed. Waits in line at gas stations topped five hours in some places, supplies were often rationed, and the graphics around the problem were devastating for Carter.

Things were going well for the GOP. With an energy crisis they could blame on Carter and Americans still incarcerated in a foreign capital, a Reagan victory looked likely. But if Carter could conjure an “October Surprise”—and free the hostages before the November election—all bets were off. Front-page photos of a triumphant Carter welcoming the hostages home on a U.S. airport tarmac could erase all of Reagan’s gains. The country would rally around Carter, the hero, and he’d win again.

That, the GOP decided, couldn’t be allowed to happen. To hell with the hostages, there was an election to win.

At the center of the plot was Governor John Connally of Texas—the same John Connally who had been wounded in the Dallas attack that killed President John F. Kennedy. Connally had switched parties from Democrat to Republican and was hoping for a Reagan win—and especially that Reagan would make him secretary of state when he did.

Thus, in the summer of 1980, Connally headed to the Middle East in a private Gulfstream jet owned by Superior Oil. He took with him Ben Barnes, a Democrat who had been Texas Speaker of the House and Texas Lt. Governor under Preston Smith. It is Barnes, now 84, who comes forth now to set history straight. A report to the CIA on the trip notes that only when they met with the first Arab leader did Barnes realize that Connally had planned.

Mr. Connally said, “‘Look, Ronald Reagan’s going to be elected president and you need to get the word to Iran that they’re going to make a better deal with Reagan than they are Carter,’” Mr. Barnes recalled. “He said, ‘It would be very smart for you to pass the word to the Iranians to wait until after this general election is over.’ And boy, I tell you, I’m sitting there and I heard it and so now it dawns on me, I realize why we’re there.”

Connally was in contact with the Reagan team during the trip—though Reagan himself may not have known about the subterfuge. Taking a passionate interest, however, was William J. Casey, who would be CIA director under Reagan.

“I’ll go to my grave believing that [blocking release of the hostages] was the purpose of the trip,” Barnes says. “It wasn’t freelancing because Casey was so interested in hearing as soon as we got back to the United States.” Mr. Casey wanted to know if “they were going to hold the hostages.”

When Barnes returned, he stayed silent about the election-tampering out of fear that, having been along with Connally, he would share blame for what Connally had done.

Now, Barnes said in an interview with the New York Times, “I think it’s so significant and I guess knowing that the end is near for President Carter put it on my mind more and more and more. … History needs to know that this happened.”