Dames & Moore v. Regan

dams and more. It comes to the Secretary of the Treasury.

“Hey everyone, this is Leon from Prologue Projects.”

On this episode of Five to Four, Peter, Reannon and Michael are talking about "Dames and More" V. Regan. The case from 1981 that offers a window into the long tortured history of American foreign policy towards Iran. The case arose when President Jimmy Carter made a deal with Iran to free the American hostages who have been taken that the U.S. embassy in Tehran back in 1979.

President Carter worked in the Oval Office throughout the night and before dawn this morning

signed the executive order that triggered the hostages' release.

The terms of the agreement called for terminating by executive order, all private lawsuits that have been filed against the Iranian government by American

“companies, and moving the disputes into arbitration.”

One of those companies, "Dames and More" sued the U.S. government, arguing that Carter's executive order now being forced by the Reagan administration overstepped the bounds of executive power. The Supreme Court disagreed, even though the law did not allow the President to intervene on private legal proceedings.

This is Five to Four, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks.

Welcome to Five to Four, where we dissect the analysis of the Supreme Court cases that have constricted our civil liberties, like the war is constricting our oil supply, thereby causing gas prices to rise. I'm Peter. I'm here with Michael, everybody, and Reannon. Hi, y'all. Now, everyone said I couldn't do a metaphor that worked about oil prices going up, and I pulled it off flawlessly. No seams. Now, we're very relevant for the 2% of our

listeners who can afford a car. Now, the price for oil effects, everything. Plastic gets more expensive. My chain stuff gets more expensive, so that means every all your imported goods get more expensive. That's good for me, because I plan to sell the plastic in my bloodstream later this year. All right, folks. Today's case, "Dames and More," the Reagan. This is a case about executive

power in the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. Two of the hottest things going on right now. All rolled up into one case. In 1979, following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, students with support from the new regime seized the American embassy in Tehran and held several dozen Americans hostage for over a year. I imagine that most of our listeners are familiar with this basic stool. This is one of the most definitive moments in American Iranian relations and the one that most colors modern American

perceptions of Iran, especially at the elite levels. So, we're going to talk about how this case, which is about the US freezing Iranian assets, how it expanded executive power, and also just maybe use this as an excuse to talk about the hostage crisis itself and the nature

“of the relationship between America and Iran. Yeah, I think there's some history we can get into.”

I mean, obviously current events like we're at war with Iran right now. And so, this case, of course, is highly relevant. This history is highly relevant. And this is one of those episodes where it's like maybe a little bit less about exactly what the majority opinion says and more about how this case fits into a really complicated and long history of American executive power and warmaking, foreign relations, all of that good stuff. You know, we've been talking, I guess, the last couple

of episodes certainly last week in the Patreon episode about how war and war powers for the US government that really we're talking about extra legal frameworks that the US government is operating in here, right? What we have here for this episode is yes, it's a case from the Supreme Court, but what we've been talking about for a long time now is how the executive really operates like without a lot of constraints at all on foreign policy by the Supreme Court or Congress. And so we're talking about

a space really that seems like it's actually accepted from American law and just want to make clear and like discuss and like break down how in part that lack of legal accountability and legal clarity results in what we see today. So yeah, let's get into some of this history. I want to say

what you know about the America Iran relationship comes through a filter that American

“understandings of Iran, of the Islamic Revolution, the hostage crisis. And today are extremely”

different from how Iranians understand those events and also how the rest of the world understands those events and the filter through which Iran and the rest of the world see those events transpiring today between the U.S. and Iran is different from the filter that we have too. So let's start in the 50s. Iranian governance at this time, just to put it really simply, was engaged in an internal power struggle between the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who is a

monarch and the prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosadev, right? Mosadev makes moves to nationalize

Iran's oil industry, which up until that point from the early 1900s had been owned by Great Britain. This was a privatized corporation but owned in part by the British government called the Anglo-Persian

“oil company. That is the predecessor to British petroleum BP. And so Iran is a very oil rich,”

very well natural resource country and within Iran Britain, a foreign country owns that resource owns the oil. And so Mosadev at the time is making moves as a leader in the Iranian government to nationalize the oil industry. Now, Britain and the United States don't like that. No, no, no, no,

no, we own the oil. So the CIA and MI6 back Iranian royalists who are loyal to the Shah to the

monarchy in a coup and Mosadev, the prime minister is deposed. So the Shah takes over and rules Iran as an absolute monarch for the next two decades. This is like the formative events in Iranian minds. When Mosadev is deposed and the Shah starts cracking down, which you'll hear about the talk about, but this is like very important to the Iranian consciousness because Western powers have been very active in the country since they struck oil in the early 1900s. And this was sort of like

proof to the mind of the median Iranian that they were not pulling the strings in their own country,

“that Western powers were pulling the strings. Yeah. That's what sticks with them through the revolution.”

Yeah, that's right. And through today, even certainly, right. So the Shah takes over Mosadev is deposed and what characterizes the Shah's reign over the next two decades until the Islamic Revolution in the late 1970s is repression, torture of dissidents, you know, corruption, a monarchy acting like a monarchy. And again, with from the perspective of the Iranian people, this is Western backed. He's backed by the United States and Great Britain in doing all of this, right? So this period

is characterized in Iran as having a lot of unrest, a lot of disapproval for the Shah's rule. And so social and political opposition across broad swaths of Iranian society are coalescing over this time. The unrest in the opposition to the Shah in Iran is happening in a connected and a very parallel way with growing opposition to the United States in the region, to the role that the United States is playing in the Middle East and North Africa, the West's role in the creation

of the state of Israel in 1948. And then further expansion of the state of Israel in 1967 and in 1973, there are developments in the Israel Palestine issue, including all out wars. And the United States at this time is outright supporting aggression and these wars. And at the same time is fomenting sectarianism across the Middle East. These things are very, very clear to the people in these countries, right? The people clocked what the United States is doing and that it leads

to unrest, right? And so, you know, this is just to say that disapproval of the Shah and the way the monarchy is sort of ruling over Iran is very connected to the idea that the United States is trying to exert this control over Iran and the Iranian people, right? So mass protests of the Shah in this, you know, diagnostic rule of Iran start in late 1977. Again, representing really broad coalitions of Iranian society, clashes happen between protesters and state police. I'm simplifying

here. We're talking about different groups taking up arms against the state or civil disobedience, nonviolent protests, all of these things clashing with state law enforcement and the power of this monarchy. And then, you know, you hate to reduce these things to like one event. But something

is that in late 1977, our New Year is even fact. President Carter, toasted the Shah's leadership

“at a new year's celebration in Iran. President Jimmy Carter gives a televised toast to the Shah.”

Iran is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world. This is a great tribute to you, your majesty and to your leadership and to the respect and the admiration and love which your people give to you. And it pisses people off and it just adds fuel to the fire that the Shah is actually to some extent, a puppet regime of the United States in Iran. It's coming in an era where not only has political oppression stamped up, like in 75, the Shah bans all political parties,

other than his own. But the country has gotten a good amount richer because of oil,

but it has been distributed very unequally across class. A lot of economic reforms

“have failed at this point. The Shah has like a very weird relationship with Islam, which is”

a major part of the society. And he is spending a huge amount of the country's oil money on American weaponry, including like an air force that they literally don't have anyone qualified to manage. They don't have pilots that can fly fucking F-16s and shit like that. And so all this together has convinced huge swaths of Iranian society that not only is the Shah incompetent, but he's just doing whatever America tells him to do. Which isn't entirely true, but they're sort of like this

underlying truth to it. At the same time, because his position in Iran is weakening, the Shah is looking for validation from the United States. He wants his primary backer to support him. And every time they do, it backfires back at home. Exactly. Exactly. So over the course of 1978, you have all of this culminating in a really broad-based uprising in earnest against the Shah. And it's undeniable that the Shah has lost all credibility to the Iranian people and that the Iranian

people want him out. So the Shah leaves Iran for exile in January of 1979. And the next month,

“another key figure that maybe even more than the Shah's name, Pahlavi, people associate with Iran”

for sure. The next month, February 1979, Ruhala Homeini comes back to Iran. So now Homeini had been a prominent cleric in the 60s who was exiled at that time for criticizing the Shah. Homeini had been living in Iraq. And now once the Shah was exiled, Homeini came back to Iran and becomes the defacto leader for most of 1979, the defacto leader of the groups taking up the fight against the monarchy a few months after the Shah leaves for exile. The monarchy is really outstead for real.

Now, the Islamic Revolution, so to speak, isn't quite over with just the Shah and the monarchy being exiled. A revolution is a period of transformation. And that is certainly the case for all of Iranian society. It was a period of transformation for all of the Iranian government. There was a

provisional revolutionary government in 1979. There are still all of these changes happening

and the people of Iran figuring out what the government is going to look like now that the people are in charge. So, you know, the uprising, the struggle is still continuing throughout 1979. In October of that year, President Jimmy Carter makes another mistake in the eyes of the Iranian people against state department advice. He allows the exiled Shah to come into the U.S. for cancer treatment. This deeply, deeply upsets Iranian revolutionaries who are at once afraid that this is a

sign that there's going to be another coup backed by the United States to reinstall the Shah. And they also are angry because they are demanding that the U.S. returned the Shah to Iran to stand trial. Carter was initially quite skeptical of allowing the Shah back in because it's not a total dumb ass. He's sort of like, well, this would be bad for our relations with the new regime. But he was convinced by several people, including Henry Kissinger, allow our friends the Shah

back into America for cancer treatment. By the way, he died like the next year. I don't know what

President good advice? No. It's all ridiculous. It depends on what your goals are, right?

“True. Kissinger might have enjoyed all of this. Yeah, that's true. Every time he caused unrest in”

another country has had got a little lower. I was going to say he's dick got a little harder, but that is well. I'm simply referring to his very low head by the end of his life.

Okay, so with the Shah invited into permitted into the United States, a group of revolutionary

students in Iran plan and eventually execute a takeover of the American embassy into Iran in November of 1979. They take hostage of dozens of Americans inside the embassy for what we now know ends up being over a year, some 440 days. These students have certain demands of the U.S. government. They are demanding that the Shah be returned to Iran for trial. They demand that the Shah's assets be unfrozen by the United States so that the Shah's assets

“will be returned to Iran and the Iranian people and they want the United States to apologize”

for interfering in Iranian affairs and quit interfering in Iranian affairs. So responding to the

hostage crisis, Jimmy Carter, just a few days after the American embassy has taken,

Jimmy Carter freezes Iranian assets inside the United States. So what are we talking about with this freezing of assets? You can imagine, of course, that the Iranian government has deals with American corporations. For example, there's a flow of money between the two countries and in response to the hostage crisis, Jimmy Carter says, okay, that flow of money is halted and any of those assets that are in the United States are frozen. Carter does this under the IEPA, the International

Emergency Economic Powers Act, which again is legislation that we talked about a couple of episodes ago because Trump used it as justification for his tariffs. In this case, of course, the statute authorizes the president to make economic decisions during times of emergency during times of war. But as part of the freezing of Iranian assets, Carter also sort of freezes court proceedings in the United States that have to do with any of Iran's interests. So let's take the

example at issue here in this very case. Dames and more is an American corporation. It's an engineering and construction firm that was saying it was owed money for work that actually they did for the Shah's government, right? Years back and they were suing to recover that money in the United States in federal court. But judgments on these cases were frozen by Carter's executive order. Dames and more's legal proceedings are ongoing over the course of the Iranian hostage crisis.

Now, separately, as the Iranian hostage crisis negotiations are culminating in an agreement, part of that agreement is that in exchange for release of the hostages, President Carter agreed that all legal proceedings brought by Americans against Iran would actually be terminated. Not just frozen, not just the judgements not moving forward, but terminated and that those disputes instead of being in federal courts, they're going to now be decided in like this administrative

arbitration process. Like, you'll go work it out with arbitrators. We're not in U.S. federal court anymore. All of this is again justified according to the Carter and then later the Reagan administrations as within the president's powers under the IEEPA. But this part of it that legal proceedings would be terminated that the president can decide, oh no, you, you can't file a lawsuit in U.S.

“district court over this. You have to go through arbitration all of the sudden, right? That's quite”

unprecedented at this time. And so, Dames and more, the American company that is suing for money it was owed by the Shah's government actually files a lawsuit against the United States government, the Carter and the Reagan administrations for telling them they have no lawsuit. They have to go through arbitration. That's how we get to the Supreme Court. Yeah. And I haven't done it yet. So, let's just do it for a bit now. Dames and more folks. That's what I would name my old fashion

saloon, you know, back in 1860. We got, come on in folks. We got Dames and more. Take me to dinner first.

Strip clubs in the 1950s. Dames and more. We got exactly what you're looking for, kid. We got Dames and more in here. Use your imagination on the more. Before we move on from the background, I want to share two little bits. One is just one of my favorite parts of the hostage crisis. And there are so many. At one point, how many receives a letter,

in Iranian affairs. Identifies numerous injustices and does so ostensibly with the purpose of opening up negotiations. Like, look, we admit that we have committed some crimes. The Iranian government does not use this to open negotiations. Instead, they publish it. They released it to the public. And then Washington denies it that Carter wrote this letter. And some people have claimed that this was forged by one of the emissaries that the United States was using. They were using a

couple of schmucks to do the initial negotiations. And some people believe that it was in fact a letter from Carter that Washington didn't just deny it because they couldn't publicly acknowledge that they had admitted to these crimes or whatever. But it does appear at one point. Someone on the American side sent a little apology for their various crimes. And the Iranian government just

published it to the world. And then everyone in Washington was like, no, no, that's no. We would never

“do that. But it doesn't sound like me. And you got to admit it, doesn't. You know what I mean?”

The other thing I want to talk about a little bit here is the end of the hostage crisis because there's a lot of mythology about why the hostage crisis ends. Why were the hostage is released right at the exact moment of Reagan's inauguration, right? Our best understanding of this is that they wanted to humiliate Carter. So I think there's this like right wing fantasy that Reagan had a real plan and he was going to kick some ass. But there's a lot of reason to believe that that was

just bullshit. That's just made up. It's really just a fantasy. In fact, there's credible reporting that the Reagan campaign during the 1980 presidential campaign met with Iranian MSaries in Madrid behind the United States government's back to coordinate a late release that would make Reagan look good and make Carter look bad. So the Reagan campaign was collaborating with the young Islamic Republic to embarrass Jimmy Carter. And all it cost was keeping the hostages detained

for just a little bit longer. This episode is brought to you by Pocket Hose, the world's number one expandable hose. So old fashion hoses get kinks and creases at the spigot, but the copperhead's pocket pivot swivel 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease all around your home. I have used this actually all around my home. I've been watering my landscaping beds and I really like the coil thing, the stretching thing, this hoses lovely. I was observing the little rainbow

“that spring water makes in the air. That's what hoses are all about. Plus, you're super light and”

ultra durable Pocket Hose Copperhead is backed with a 10 year warranty. The brand new Pocket Hose

Copperhead with Pocket Pivot is a total game changer. After trying the Pocket Hose, I'm not going back.

The hoses so lightweight and durable watering the yard, those landscaping beds get in dry in Texas. It's a dream now. For a limited time guys, 5-4 listeners can get a free Pocket Pivot and their 10 pattern sprayer with the purchase of any size Copperhead Hose. Just text 5-4 all spelled out to 64,000. That's 5-4 all spelled out to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase. 5-4 all spelled out, 2-6-4,00. Message and data rates may apply.

See terms for details. Hey y'all, I have a question for you. What's your relationship to hide protein anything right now? You remember on Facebook back in the day when you would define the terms of your relationship with something. I would say mine, my relationship with high protein anything right now. It's complicated. But something makes it less complicated. That is fuel. You've heard me talk about fuel before.

I talked about the black edition ready to drink meal replacement. I'm still drinking those. It really helps me get a protein boost in the morning because one of these ready to drink

meal replacements has 35 grams of protein, 27 essential vitamins and minerals.

“There aren't any artificial sweeteners or colors or flavors. It's gluten free. If that's what you need.”

And the price is right. They're under $5 per meal. So basically it's a complete meal that you can literally grab and go. But there's also the fuel black edition powder. If you're wanting something that's like more built, it's thicker. This is blended. It can be more filling. If you have protein goals, then the black edition powder can really help you hit those goals without needing

really, really, really easy. Fuel has a limited time offer for you. You can get fuel today with the

“5/4 exclusive offer of 15% off online with the code 5/4 all spelled out at huel.com/5/4. This is an offer for”

new customers only. Thank you to huel for partnering and supporting our show. So let's talk about the law. So again, as part of the agreement to release the hostages, the president orders that all legal proceedings brought by Americans against Iran would be suspended, terminated, and that those claims would all be funneled into like this newly established arbitration tribunal. And, names and more, who have claims against Iran,

they challenged the legality of these executive orders. They said that they were outside the

scope of the president's power. So the legal question is, does the president have the power to do

this under the international emergency economic powers act or otherwise? And the Supreme Court in

“an eight to one decision says yes. So first, the court says that some of the things the president”

did are expressly allowed for in the IEEPA. He froze assets, he nullified attachments on those assets, he transferred those assets, all of which is relatively expressly allowed for by the law. Okay. But then there is this whole suspension of claims thing, the whole terminating lawsuits and then forcing them into arbitration. That is not really in the law. The court openly admits that the law does not authorize that, which you'd think could be the end of the case, right? It feels when you're

reading it, like it's the end of the case. Yeah, they're about to rule that way. Yeah, they're like the law doesn't actually say the president can do this. Yeah, the president does not have this power under the law and you're like, okay, game over, right? No. The court said it doesn't matter because Congress has acquiesced on this issue. They say basically there have been similar agreements entered into with foreign nations in the past to settle claims, although they don't specify.

You're like, are they similar? Right. It's kind of like, oh, yeah, this is exactly like how it went down with France, you know, five years ago, but they don't talk about it. When you read it, they're sort of like, well, like we've settled stuff with China and it's like, right, but that's not exactly what's happening here, right? Not just a settlement, but they say, look, this has happened

before and Congress never objected to it and therefore it has implicitly accepted these types of

“settlements as legitimate. So this is a very bizarre understanding of constitutional power, right?”

What the court is saying is that one branch of government can effectively seize power from another simply by exercising the power and then hoping the other branch doesn't object, right? For law students and lawyers out there, this has been called the constitutional law by adverse possession. Adverse possession is this idea and property law that like, if you inhabit a property for long enough without objection, then it will become yours. So from a pure constitutional

theory perspective, it's as if the constitutional only serves as guidance here and then like the actual law is sort of like a mud wrestling match between the branches or something and it's not to say that what the branches have done historically should be irrelevant, but it feels bizarre for it to sort of override the realities of the written law, right? For them to say, like, look, the law doesn't authorize this, but we've sort of been acting like it does. So now it does.

It's not even a wrestling match here between the two branches. It's that Congress didn't do anything. Right. Right. It's like the Constitution is guidance, but then if one of the branches does something and the other branch doesn't do anything, then they can actually do whatever they want. Right. You're not defending yourself. Right. And so we're going to take that as surrender. Yeah. It's not surprising that when the executive and Congress are sort of

figuring out the division of powers and foreign affairs, that it might be informal in a way. Right. It might be like a sort of informal political see how things shake out thing. But then once it hits the Supreme Court, you'd expect them to be like, but there are formal limits to this. The Constitution says XYZ, the statute say XYZ, and that's that. And instead they're like, just eyeballing it, you know, yeah, presence of stuff similar to this

that comes up quite a bit where a statute is ambiguous. Right. And so it's sort of unclear.

“Does the statute authorize this or not? We're not sure. And then you start to look towards”

historical practice. Well, the president's been acting like it authorizes it. The Congress has been acting like it authorizes it. Maybe it does. Right. But here you have a situation where the statute is not ambiguous. The court says, oh, this is clear. It doesn't authorize this. Right. And yet we're still going to act as though the president can just sort of like forge his way through. It doesn't quite make sense. And it's sort of butchering this this old case from the 50s, from the Korean war

Youngstown sheet, too. We talked about this in our last premium episode, too. This is a big war powers

case because basically, Truman tried to seize some steel mills to break a strike during the Korean

war. And the Supreme Court was like, no, you can't seize the steel mills. You can't just do that. Just because there's a war. I mean, you can seize steel mills, you know. And there's a concurrence in that case where Justice Jackson breaks all this down. He's like, there are areas where a statute clearly authorizes it. There's a twilight zone where it's unclear. Then there are areas where the statute clearly doesn't authorize it. And this majority sort of just like butchers that

whole analysis. And like just turns it on its head and is like, yeah, just because it doesn't authorize it. Doesn't mean anything like this. Part of me doesn't want to put too much weight on what the court's trying to do here because the actual bottom line is that this case is about the deal that ended

“the hostage crisis. Right. You have to look at it in that framing. The court heard this case on an”

expedited schedule. I think it was only like a month or so. And that means that like to some degree, the court might think, oh, if we rule against the administration here, the legitimacy of the deal to end of the hostage crisis is at issue. Right. Right. This is going to fuck up international relations shit in a way that's like way beyond our scope. And like what's the the simplest, easiest political decision for the court is just to be like, all right, now you the administration

can do this like we're not getting influenced with the shit. Right. Right. But they don't have the balls to say that. They don't have the balls to be like, no fucking way. We're not touching this, no way. What are you talking about? But I think that is what's happening here. While we're talking about the executive branch sort of extending itself acting in this almost extra legal manner in regards to Iran in the early 80s, we have to discuss the Iran contra affair and the absolute

insane shit the Reagan administration was up to in the region in this time. Yeah. Yeah. So in the history leading up to this, we talked about how, you know, the Shah was buying lots of US weapons, right, buying fighter planes, buying guns and what have you from the US government. And we talked about how right when, you know, 1980 is ending and if 1980 Iraq evades Iran. Now this creates a demand in Iran for American weapons and American parts, replacement parts for their weapons that are

breaking down. At the same time, the political conditions in America are such that, you know, Reagan is out here saying, we are not going to send any weapons to Iran. And what's more, they're going out and lobbying other nations not to send weapons to Iran. At the same time, there are people in his administration saying, hey, if nobody in the West is going to sell weapons

“to Iran, what if the Soviet Union does? What if the Soviet Union starts expanding their influence?”

Other people are saying, hey, we could maybe sell weapons to quote unquote moderates. We like in Iran and strengthen their hand against, you know, the regime we don't like. And still, other people are saying, hey, Hezbollah has six hostages over in Lebanon. And if we sell weapons to Iran, maybe they can help us broker a deal to get those American hostages out. Depending on who you ask and when you ask them years later, one of these explanations is like

the reason why the US secretly started selling weapons to Iran, hard to know which is the real one,

or maybe it's all three. But the bottom line is the Reagan administration does start secretly selling

weapons to Iran and does it for several years. And they use Israel as a go between, they use Saudi Arabia

and is replaced by who was then a little known sort of mid-level national security guy, Oliver North,

now somewhat infamous in political circles. And Ali North takes over. And he's like, hey, you know what I noticed? The Sandinistas are running Nicaragua and we don't like that. Layers of history. Well, just geopolitics happening all the time.

“And there are these contras that we do like that oppose the Sandinistas, right?”

But Congress has said, we can't arm them anymore. We can't fund them anymore. We can't help the contras. Well, if we want to secretly sell arms to Iran and you want to secretly fund the

contras, maybe we could like roll this together into one thing. Maybe we can sell weapons to Iran

at a markup and then take the proceeds and give it to the contras, thereby solving both their problems. And they did. It's called the Iran Contra of here. That's right. The Iran Contra of here where they were secretly selling weapons to Iran and secretly funding the contras expressly against congressional prohibition against funding the contras. You know, they're thinking being like, well, we're not using a congressional appropriated funds, aren't we? Yeah, we're using

weapons proceeds. Right, we're using all these great profits we're getting from our secret arms sales to Iran. Funny, funny story and other alternative method was they try to get money from Brunei and Ali North's like secretary. I think the name is Fond Hall, something like that. Messed up the Swiss bank account number, like transposed numbers and some random guy just got

ten million dollars in this bank account. Sounds like. I don't know where this came from and

it like reported to the authorities and had to be returned to Brunei and it was like two public

“then for them to like, you know, try again. Yeah. Real just real top shelf. How much you have to be”

to call the cops when they like somebody gave me ten million dollars. They've already got a Swiss bank account. So they're probably loaded like that was what you did in the 80s, right? If you were quite rich, imagine you get 10 million. You're like, this is a bit of a mistake. I'm waiting five years before I say anything. I didn't notice. I didn't notice at all. Yeah, I'm starting to talk about adverse possession, you know. Yeah, seriously. So this all comes out in 1986. It becomes very public.

It's a huge scandal. There's a commission appointed. There's a special council appointed. A bunch of people are indicted. Most of them, if not all of them are convicted. Some of those convictions are overturned on appeal. Some of them only resulted in probation as a sentence. One guy goes to

“prison. Some, but ultimately everyone, including some who were awaiting sentencing, I believe,”

got partis. They got pardoned by George H W Bush at the end of his term. And so really, nobody involved a page any price other than that one guy who went to prison sucks for him. But I do think it's a interesting lesson in how unrestrained the executive branch often is. We talk about how this is an extra legal area and how courts want to stay out of it and there's just a lot of political wrangling. And you can see that here where these guys were cowboys, right?

They're just doing whatever the fuck they wanted. They were like, yeah, let's just cowage Iran on weapons because they need them for the war with Iraq. And then use that money to fund the contracts in Nicaragua. What the fuck? They're just doing whatever they want and daring someone to call them out on it. And the political fallout ended up being very little, right? Like, Reagan's VP won election two years later and he parted everyone involved. Yeah. And not just that,

like, but Oliver North became like a talk show host. Right. He's a right-wing hero because he's a criminal piece of shit. You know, I mean, who got away with it. Yeah. Right. And what you see here, too, is when Congress does act, Congress had acted in the Iran contra affair at least leading up to the Iran contra affair in prohibiting the executive to ask the way it did. And we said this on the last episode as well, right? In this extra legal world playing field that we're in,

what actually is incentivized is for presidential administrations to do whatever they want. And maybe you have to ask for forgiveness afterwards. Or maybe they give themselves forgiveness, right?

the separation of power. Yeah. Maybe in light of some of the discussion of the malfeasance of

“the Reagan administration, it makes sense to circle back to the end of the hostage crisis. And I'm”

going to read from the Algiers' Accords, which was our agreement with Iran to end the hostage crisis. Point one, non-intervention in Iranian affairs. The United States pledges that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene directly or indirectly, politically or militarily in Iran's internal affairs. What happened subsequent to that was that the United States funded Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran and then also illegally sold Iran weapons on the

other side of that immediately after the agreement was struck. All the Iranians had to do was release the hostages, which they did. And among other things, the United States would stop meddling at

Iranian affairs, which they didn't even for a fucking second, not for a moment. I want to use this

as just like a big picture framework for understanding American Iranian relations because for us, it's 1979 in the hostage crisis. And anyone in government now believes that Iran is basically this evil terrorist state and that has been the case for 50 years because of the hostage crisis. Meanwhile, in Iran ever since 1953, it's been a belief that the West spearheaded by the United

“States is just constantly meddling in Iranian affairs, right? Now, I think to some degree everyone is”

correct, but you know, the Iranian state is sort of characterized by its paranoia about the Americans. And that paranoia at times exceeds the level that it should. There are times during the Shah's rain where people believed that everything that was happening economically was sort of the result

of American meddling when it wasn't. But there has never been a time since 1953, really since

the 40s when the allies attacked Iran to gain a supply route, but you can keep on, you know what, let's walk it back, 600 B.C. Cyrus the greatest born in a small village, but the real dynamic between these countries is sort of, yes, this seeding hatred from the Iranian side toward America on one side, but nonstop interference from Americans, right? Interference that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead in the Iran Iraq War alone. And is now going to result in tens of

thousands of more dead more likely than not, right? To say nothing of, you know, all the people killed and tortured and imprisoned by regimes that were backed by the US, right? Right. And the victims

of sanctions, right? Oh, it's always so interesting to me to hear people talk about like, well,

what, why is the war on Iran justified? And maybe they point to the hostage crisis more likely these days, they point to the rhetoric, right? They say debt to America. That's like, yeah, there has not been a generation of Iranians that hasn't had their life made a materially worse by America. Of course, they say debt to America. How do you get to a point where students believe that everyone in your embassy is a spy to the point where they want to capture it by interfering in the countries affairs

“for 25 consecutive years? That's how, you know? Yeah. I don't know that I have a broad point here exactly.”

Other than the disconnect between the rhetoric about Iran and like the dangerousness of the regime that you see from American media is completely detached from the actual reality of America's impact on Iran, right? It is to them this one way thing. This country is full of radicals who hate us irrationally, right? And my real pitch here is that there's some truth to that. There is an irrational anti-Americanism in Iran, but it is the natural output of 70 years of interference in

Iranian affairs. Yeah, you can call it irrationally, you can call it whatever you want, but when hundreds of thousands of Iranians are in the street just last week to demonstrate their opposition to the US bombing their country and US F-35 jets are purposely flown over those demonstrations

paranoia can be irrational, but also a product of your experience. If you are consistently traumatized,

“it might create a paranoia. The paranoia is simultaneously rational and irrational, right?”

Yeah, it's a term for that in like actual trauma, right? It's called hypervigilance for people with pizza. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I have sort of like a broad take away from a lot of these cases because a lot of them are predicated on the idea that we need like strong executive leadership in foreign policy, right? This is why presidents must be allowed to act untethered by Congress or courts or whomever when it comes to foreign policy because we need strong men being decisive. And I think

“many people believe that that philosophy speaks for itself, right? Of course. Of course, you can't do”

war by committee, right? You need a strong clear voice to cut through the bullshit and get things done. Totally. You don't need a school alarm telling you what the rules are. And in practice, look at these bumbling dipshits. Look at these cowards, disgusting freaks, who are unbound by any rules, right? That's where it has led us, right? The outcome of this case in a vacuum, not super offensive, right? The hostage crisis ends and we sort of all move on and that's

sort of how it goes, right? But behind it is this idea that like you need the president to be able to act, you need them to be able to act freely. And if Congress sees their power to him,

“then you can seize it and use that power forever. I think that philosophy has led us to terrible”

places over the span of our country's existence. Peter, it sounds like you are becoming a convert to

my theory that I first floated on the Patreon episode last week that our political elites are

bloodthirsty subhuman morons. What do you think? You know Michael, you have been slowly winning me over with this new and exciting theory you have. Alright folks, we're taking off next week because once again I have got to go to the Caribbean. I'm doing a twice a month now. And then in a couple of weeks we are going to come back with Hudson V. Michigan, a case from 2006 about the Fourth Amendment. Follow us on social media at

five four pods, subscribe to our Patreon, patreon and dot com slash five four pod all spelled out for accessing to premium and ad free episodes, special events, our Slack, all sorts of shit. See you in a couple weeks. Bye everybody. Bye y'all. Five to four is presented by prologue projects. This episode was produced by Andrew Parsons, Leon Nefak provides editorial support. Our website was designed by Peter Murphy.

Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at ships and why and our theme song is by spatial relations. If you're not a Patreon member, you're not hearing every episode to get exclusive Patreon only episodes, add free episodes, discounts on merch, access to our Slack community, and more join at patreon dot com slash five four pod.

Yeah, we don't need to take this week off. Third host Afroman.