21 years ago today

‎21 years ago today Iran released the hostages. Reagan had won the election. On the day of his inauguration, January 20th, twenty minutes after he concluded his inaugural address—the Islamic Republic of Iran announced the release of the hostages. The timing gave rise to an allegation that representatives of Reagan's presidential campaign had conspired with Iran to delay the release until after the election in order to thwart President Carter from pulling off an "October surprise" by negotiating the release of the hostages and winning the election.

According to the allegation, the Reagan Administration rewarded Iran for its participation in the plot to continue to hold the hostages by supplying Iran with weapons via Israel and by unblocking Iranian government monetary assets in US banks.

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. There have been allegations that the plane crash the killed the Portuguese Prime Minister, Francisco de Sá Carneiro, in 1980 was in fact an assasination of the Defence Minister, Adelino Amaro da Costa, who had said that he had documents concerning the October surprise conspiracy theory and was planning on taking them to the United Nations General Assembly.