Why did President Reagan sell arms to Iraq and Iran during their 8 year war?

Answer 1

Reagan gave arms to Iraq, because Iran was seen as our enemy at the time. The war started after the embassy hostage crisis.

THEN Reagan sold arms to Iran, in exchange for freeing hostages in the middle east. The plan worked. BUT it became part of the Iran/Contra crisis of the mid 80's.

It was a complicated scheme to sell weapons to Iran, which lead to American hostages being released. AND use the profits to fund the contras. Which was illegal, because Congress cut the funding for the contras in 1986. The story goes on and on.

I remember this very well, and have a few books on it.

Answer 2

Iran had taken and only recently returned our hostages after 444 days, (probably because Iran knew they'd be going to war with Iraq soon) We first sold to Iraq all the arms they wanted due to our obvious dislike for the Iranians, this was a way the USA could 'support the other side'. Only towards the end of Iran's war with Iraq did we relent and sell arms to Iran - at greatly inflated prices, (spare parts for other American arms bought under the Shah was the chief reason), because (suddenly) Hussein was courting the Russian as Iraq's preferred partner. (Russia had promised them nuclear weapons). And by that time Iran lost close to a million unarmed, (and I mean unarmed!) soldiers. (Did you know that the Ayatollah's used to demand that the 'boys army' as they were referred to, overwhelm the opponent in HUMAN WAVES, and take IRAQI guns after they'd run over the Iraqis?) So, the USA changed course and sold to the Iranians. We couldn' risk Iraq becoming a soviet satellite. The cold war wasn't won yet...
That is what and how Iranians think of their soldiers, sending them into a gun fight with a knife.
Anyways, does this help any?

Answer 3

we supported Iraq and used the military they had to keep pressure on Iran .We supplied jets rockets and bombs as needed .We kept a lock on spare parts for the jet engines so by the time Iraq became a threat to america the 2 dozen jets we had supplied them with were toast .We saw to that the first time we went in .
Saddam said kuwaitt was slant drilling into Iraq oil fields and steal valuable oil .So back then it was almost ok for saddam to invade kuwaitt .but we had or should i say the oil companies had secured several deals with kuwaitt and that changed everything .
Saddam backed out and set the fields that had been stealing oil on fire .Do not forget we put the sha of Iran in power years before .
This whole middle-east nightmare has been going on for 35 years .The differance is now we have troops stationed in Iraq .We are preparing to secure the worlds largest oil reserves that just happen to be under the middle east .

Answer 4

Well---

Selling to Iran - arms for hostages. Hmm-- I thought we didn't negotiate with terrorists.

Iraq - to stave off Iran from taking over Iraq

Money--> To the help with the conflict in central america. Oli North anybody?

Bush I had a hand in decieving congress too.

Answer 5

Ali Ibrahim made very clean: "it is genuinely ludicrous. i exchange into interior the Ba’athist Revolution who won help from the Soviet Union by way of socialist ideology in the back of it. The Soviet Union openly supported and sponsored the Ba’athist revolution in Iraq on the time and that i'm constructive you will locate information articles approximately it in eu press companies and others on the time. i exchange into there helping with the revolution and worked on 2 events with Soviet KGB officers to help prepare us, very like america did with the Taliban in the process the Soviet marketing campaign in Afghanistan. america never on the instant gave us any WMDs yet fairly ingredients. They weren't blended and those ‘ingredients’ might have been surely used for commercial use yet have been fairly used to construct low life chemical weapons." you have no longer any theory what you're speaking approximately.

Answer 6

Because the USA government has always been a war mongering terrorist group seeking to impose their will on the rest of the world.
Read history and see all the corrupt leaders of countries that they have supported in the past!

Answer 7

I believe they only supplied iraq because iran wanted to spread islam to all countries and wanted to expand or something along those lines.

Answer 8

$$$$$$$$

Billions were skimmed in the Iran/Contra Affair. Ollie North (where else have I seen that rehearsed sincere look?) was not the only one who made it big out of that mess.

Answer 9

So that people would ask questions about it on yahoo answers 20 years later.

Answer 10

Don't forget supplying Osama and cronies (i.e. Taliban) with weapons and military training....