Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 and served in office from 1981 to 1989. He brought to the executive branch a strong opposition to communism. Reagan was a strong supporter of Israel and wanted to work in that region which also had opposition to communism. This began the Iran-Contra affair. The Iran-contra affair, in which weapons were sold to Iran by the Reagan administration, showed the determination that the executive branch had to preserve U.S interests by freeing American hostages and erasing communism from U.S interested areas.
The Iran-Contra scandal involved the United States' dealings with two countries: Iran and Nicaragua. It can be said that President Reagan had a deep disgust for communism. During his time working in Hollywood,…show more content… The base of this conflict can be looked back to the events following the Nicaraguan revolution, in which the dictator the United States was allied with was overthrew and the Sandinista National Liberation Front took control of the politics. To add insult to injury for the U.S the Sandinistas sought to bring a more socialist economic policy which fostered closer ties with the Cubans. Since 1981, Reagan had insisted that the Sandinistas who governed Nicaragua were Marxist extremists who would form close ties with Cuba and the Soviet Union. ( The Iran-Contra Scandal Taints the Reagan Administration,1999) Upon Reagans election as president, Reagan outright opposed the Sandinista government and had the Central Intelligence agency begin to fund, equip, and train a guerrilla army comprised of National Guardsmen, ex-Sandinista soldiers critical of the new regime, and peasants and farmers upset with “intrusive” Sandinista land policies(Contra War, 2015). The Contra’s failure to overthrow the Sandinistas, divided public opinion, and the numerous human rights offenses charged against the Contras pushed congress to end the Reagan Administration’s support for the Contras, in October, 1984, Congress had passed the Boland Amendment, which prohibited aid to the Contras by any executive-branch agency that was involved in intelligence activities. (The Iran-Contra Scandal Taints the Reagan Administration,