Iran-Contra Affair

The Iran-Contra Affair (also known as "Irangate") was a mid-1980s political scandal in the United States. President Ronald Reagan's administration sold arms to Iran, an avowed enemy. At the time, Americans were being held hostage by Islamic terrorists in Lebanon, and it was hoped that Iran would influence the terrorists to release the hostages; at the same time, Iran, which was in the midst of the Iran-Iraq War, could find few nations willing to supply it with weapons. The U.S. diverted proceeds from the sale to the Contras, anti-Communist guerrillas engaged in an insurgency against the socialist Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Both the sale of weapons and the funding of the Contras violated stated administration policy as well as legislation passed by the Democratic-controlled Congress, which had blocked further Contra funding.

Significance: The separation of powers

The Iran-Contra Affair is significant because it brought many questions into public view:

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• Does the president have unconditional authority to conduct foreign policy? (Can the president approve selling arms to a foreign nation without congressional approval?)
• What information does the president have to provide to Congress and when should that information be supplied? (Does the president have to tell Congress about foreign policy initiatives?)
• What authority, if any, does Congress have to oversee functions of the executive branch? (Does funding for foreign policy initiatives have to be approved by Congress? Who defines the entire spending budget and who regulates it? Is the provision of the 1978 Ethics in Government Act that creates the position of independent counsel answering to the Attorney General, constitutional?)
• What role does the Supreme Court have in deciding conflicts between the legislative branch and executive branch?
• How much support is America entitled to provide to armed opposition forces seeking to replace governments with ones more sympathetic to the United States?

Most, if not all, of the constitutional and ethical questions are still unresolved. On one view, it appears that if the legislative and executive branches do not wish to work together, there are no legal remedies. These issues are of far-reaching importance in themselves, and also in light of the fact that several key people implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal reappeared again at high-level posts in later administrations, most notably in George W. Bush's administration.

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