When Trump did a Reagan – Firstpost
January 20, 1981: 52 American hostages are released in Tehran.
January 19, 2025: Three Israeli women hostages are released in Gaza City.
The incidents are 44 years apart yet very similar—and the dates weren’t coincidental.
The 52 Americans were part of the 66 diplomats, guards and other employees taken hostage by students loyal to the brutal fundamentalist Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the US Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979.
As Republican Ronald Regan delivered the inaugural address as the 40th US president on January 20, 1981, the hostages were released after 444 days.
20 Jan 1981: The 52 U.S. #hostages held at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran are released moments after President Ronald #Reagan is #inaugurated as #president of the United States, ending the 444-day ordeal. #history #HistoryMatters #OTD #freedom #ad https://t.co/Xg3nxc6bPV pic.twitter.com/LrsAhe2xfo
— Today In History (@URDailyHistory) January 20, 2025
The three Israeli women were part of 250-plus hostages taken by Hamas fiends during the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel.
Around four decades later, on the eve of Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Hamas handed the three women to the Red Cross after holding them captive for 471 days.
As three young Jewish women were transferred into Israeli hands, after being brutally kidnapped on October 7th by Hamas and held in inhumane conditions for over 15 months by the Islamist terrorist group, this is how the people of Gaza responded to their release today — hordes of… pic.twitter.com/bnT4e0wrct
— Brooke Goldstein (@GoldsteinBrooke) January 19, 2025
The three women were released under a Hamas-Israel ceasefire deal, which has been elusive—a short one in November 2023 and several attempts in 2024—for more than a year with the US, Qatar and Egypt trying desperately to halt the war.
The way the episodes in the two hostage releases unfolded has striking parallels.
First, the hostages in both cases were held for more than a year with no sign of freedom. Suddenly, they were freed around the most important quadrennial event in American politics.
Second, top US officials visited West Asia to persuade allies to get the hostages freed.
Third, both events garnered publicity for the incoming presidents with their predecessors shown in bad light.
Machination behind US hostage release
Reagan’s predecessor, Jimmy Carter, started negotiating with Iran for the release of the hostages after the disastrous rescue mission, Operation Eagle Claw, which ended up killing eight US servicemen.
Finally, when the deposed Shah of Iran died and America agreed to return his wealth to Iran, Khomeini agreed to release the hostages under the Algiers Accords, signed on January 19, 1981.
Under the deal, the hostages were to be released on the same day—24 hours before Carter handed the baton to Reagan. However, Carter was robbed of his due credit as hostages were freed a day later when Reagan was delivering his inaugural speech.
Carter would have gained massive electoral mileage if the hostages had been released during his first term and second White House race. However, the delay undermined Carter’s foreign policy and his administration look weak and ineffective.
It was evident that Iran had deliberately delayed freeing the hostages so that Reagan could be credited with their release.
Why did Iran delay releasing the hostages?
There are conflicting versions.
Republicans claim that Regan’s tough talk and his campaign trail promise that he would never negotiate with Tehran made the Iranians relent.
American journalist and writer Mark Bowden has a different take. According to his 2006 book Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam, Iran despised Carter as he was the president during the Iranian Revolution. Tehran “decided to deny Carter the satisfaction of seeing it happen on his watch”, he writes.
The most controversial version is the ‘October Surprise’ theory. The term refers to a sudden unplanned event that can damage one presidential candidate’s prospects and boost his/her rival’s.
‘October Surprise’ gained political meaning during the 1980 presidential campaign when used by Reagan’s campaign manager William Casey, who was appointed the director of Central Intelligence (now National Intelligence) in the incoming administration.
Reagan’s top aides, including running mate George HW Bush and Casey, colluded with the Iranians to delay the hostage release. The Reagan camp feared Carter’s prospects would be boosted if the hostages were released before Election Day—they wanted to prevent an ‘October Surprise’.
Casey pulled the strings with the help of former Texas governor John Connally Jr., who had served John F Kennedy, Lyndon B Johnson and Richard Nixon and lost the GOP nomination to Reagan.
A former Democrat, Connally, according to his protégé Ben Barnes—a former Texas House of Representatives Speaker and lieutenant governor—wanted to help Regan scuttle Carter’s prospects and become the secretary of state or defence in the new administration.
Barnes and Connally travelled to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel to persuade Iran to release the hostages only after Carter exited.
In March 2023, Barned told
The New York Times (NYT) that in every West Asian country, except for Israel, Connally told leaders that they should convince Iran to delay the hostage release as Reagan was going to be elected and would offer a better arms deal to the Iranians.
After returning from West Asia, Connally reported to Casey, who allegedly met Iranian representatives in Madrid in July and August. Under a deal finalised with Tehran in Paris in October, Iran agreed to release the hostages in exchange for weapons to fight in the impending war with Iraq.
In his 1991 book October Surprise: America’s Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan, Gary Sick, an expert on Iran who served on the National Security Council under Gerald Ford, Carter and for a few weeks under Reagan, describes how the Reagan-Bush campaign and Iran colluded to delay the hostage release. In return, the Reagan administration would return Iran’s frozen assets and “help them acquire badly needed military equipment and spare parts”.
The Carter administration had embargoed arms supplies to Iran. Israel agreed to act as the channel for the arms supply.
Between October 15 and 20, 1980, a series of meetings between the Reagan-Bush campaign and senior Iranian and Israeli representatives were held in Paris. According to Sick, five of his sources claimed that Bush was present at one meeting.
“Iran publicly shifted its position in the negotiations with the Carter Administration, disclaiming any further interest in receiving military equipment,” according to Sick.
Between October 21 and 23, Israel secretly sent a planeload of F-4 fighter jet tyres to Iran. “On October 22, the hostages were suddenly dispersed to different locations. A series of delaying tactics in late October by the Iranian Parliament stymied all attempts by the Carter
Administration to act on the hostage question until only hours before Election Day.”
In an about-face on January 15, 1981, Iran offered “a series of startling concessions that reignited the talks and resulted in a final agreement” on releasing the hostages.
The Reagan administration immediately started shipping massive shipments of arms worth hundreds of millions of dollars via Israel to Iran.
Barbara Honegger, a 1980 Reagan–Bush campaign staffer and later a Reagan White House aide, also claimed that Bush and Casey sabotaged the Iran talks to damage Carter.
Similarly, Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, Iran’s first president after the revolution, alleged that the “Reagan campaign struck a deal with Tehran to delay the release of the hostages in 1980”. In his book My Turn to Speak: Iran, the Revolution & Secret Deals with the US, he writes: “I have proof of contacts between Khomeini and the supporters of Ronald Reagan as early as the spring of 1980.”
Game behind Israeli hostage release, Gaza Ceasefire
Trump’s arrival was a political tsunami like his 2016 victory. Neither American allies nor enemies expected his thunderous comeback.
When Trump won, equations changed—first, in West Asia. Outgoing President Joe Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was jetting frequently to the region and several European capitals last year to hammer out a ceasefire deal with Qatar and Egypt’s mediation.
Biden’s biggest foreign policy blots were the Russia-Ukraine War and the Hamas-Israel conflict. He had failed miserably on both fronts and was desperate to silence the guns, at least, in Gaza.
Well aware of Trump’s strongman image in West Asia and his closeness with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden knew that reaching a ceasefire deal would be his successor’s priority. After Trump’s win, time was ticking fast. Biden was frustrated and anxious about failing to secure a deal before Trump.
Biden was also aware that Trump would steal the thunder even if a deal were reached—and that’s exactly what happened. Trump has claimed credit for the deal several times.
On January 15, Trump posted on Truth Social: “This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November…”
On January 16, on the Dan Bongino Show, he said, “If we weren’t involved in this deal, the deal would’ve never happened.”
On January 19, at a MAGA Victory Rally in Washington, D.C., he said, “This agreement could have happened only as a result of our historic victory in November.”
On January 21, he told the media at the White House that if he weren’t here, the hostages “wouldn’t have come back ever”.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: We’re thinking about going to the Middle East. The hostages are coming back. Some of them have been very damaged… If I weren’t here, they wouldn’t have come back ever… October 7th never should’ve happened. pic.twitter.com/bMARjhwnxw
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) January 21, 2025
The ceasefire deal isn’t very different from the earlier ones pushed by the US, Qatar and Egypt but they all failed despite the best efforts.
Israel-Gaza ceasefire: Read the full text of the agreement ⤵️
The plan will see the release of both Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners over the coming weekshttps://t.co/HeBz5CGwk8
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) January 15, 2025
So, why was a deal reached on Trump’s inauguration eve? Two key players played a role in clinching the deal for Trump.
The first player was Trump’s old pal Netanyahu.
The Israeli PM had rejected ceasefire proposals during Biden’s term to keep the war alive for his political survival, showing the US president as weak and assisting Trump.
Netanyahu sensed that a deal would see the hostages return home and he could argue that Israel is more powerful now following the heavy blows dealt to Hamas, Lebanon and Iran.
Netanyahu, out of Biden’s control, wanted Trump back. Israel’s incessant bombing of Gaza, the invasion of Rafah and opening a front with Hezbollah and the killing of its top leadership challenged an increasingly weak Biden, whose threat to stop arming Israel failed. The rising civilian casualties in Gaza and the possibility of wider regional conflict hurt the Democratic Party’s chances in the election.
Bibi felt more emboldened after Trump picked a pro-Israel team. Secretary of state Marco Rubio and national security adviser Mike Waltz have been confirmed while Trump’s other pro-Israel picks, Elise Stefanik (envoy to UN), Mike Huckabee (ambassador to Israel) and Steve Witkoff (special envoy to the Middle East), await confirmation. Waltz has said that Hamas “must be destroyed” and “cannot have a role” in post-war Gaza.
The chances of the ceasefire holding are remote—both Netanyahu and Trump know it.
In a
statement on January 18, Netanyahu said that Israel would resume fighting if “the second-stage negotiations are ineffectual”. “Both President Trump and President Biden have given full backing to Israel’s right to return to the fighting. … If we need to go back to the fighting, we will do so in new ways and with great force,” he said clearly,” he said.
The Israeli PM also said that Trump “rightly emphasised that the first stage of the agreement is a temporary ceasefire” and had agreed to “lift the remaining restrictions on providing vital weapons and munitions to” Israel.
Netanyahu also knew that he could eye the West Bank after a Gaza ceasefire. On January 21, Trump rescinded the Biden-era Executive Order 14115, which sanctioned far-right Israeli settler groups accused of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. Hours later, Israel announced a massive military operation called the Iron Wall in the West Bank city of Jenin killing 10 Palestinians.
Trump also knows the deal is hanging by a thread and isn’t confident. Asked by a reporter during a signing ceremony at the Oval Office on January 21 whether the ceasefire will hold in all three phases, he replied, “I’m not confident.”
The second key played in the ceasefire was Qatar.
Coincidentally, Qatar, mediating between Hamas and Israel since October 2023, pulled out in November 2024 like Iran, which changed its stance on the negotiations with the Carter administration in October 1980.
Though Qatar denied that the decision was made under American or Israeli pressure, it changed its stance the same month—around one month before Trump warned that “all hell will break out” in West Asia if Hamas didn’t release the hostages.
In a sudden U-turn like Iran in January 1980, Doha quietly resumed the mediator’s role in late November as Witkoff met Qatari Emir Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Netanyahu in a striking parallel with Connally’s behind-the-scenes negotiations in the Iran hostage deal. Since Biden was in office, Brett McGurk, his National Security Council coordinator for Middle East and North Africa affairs, was also included in the talks.
Witkoff told Al Thani that Trump wanted a deal before his inauguration. Qatar had no option but to resume its mediatory role for two reasons.
First was Witkoff. A New York real estate developer and investor, he was Trump’s golfing buddy, has known the president since the 80s and has deep ties with the Qataris.
In August 2023, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund purchased New York’s 46-storey Park Lane Hotel, once a part of an investigation by the US Justice Department, from Witkoff’s company for $623 million. Qatar Investment Authority invested about $1 billion in real estate in New York City in 2023. Witkoff and his son are looking for real estate opportunities in the tiny peninsular nation of futuristic skyscrapers.
Second, Qatar also hosts the largest US military base in West Asia. In January 2024, the US signed a deal with Qatar, a non-NATO ally, to extend its presence at the Al Udeid Air Base, which houses the USAF’s 379th Air Expeditionary Wing and is also the home base of CENTCOM and the 319th Air Expeditionary Group, comprising bombers, fighters and reconnaissance aircraft.
Qatar is aware of Trump’s maverick nature and proclivity for hasty decisions. In June 2017, Trump accused Qatar of sponsoring terrorism after Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners isolated Doha diplomatically and economically for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, other Jihadist groups and Iran. However, barely a year later, Trump praised Qatar for combatting terrorism financing.
The momentum for a deal was back in December as another round of dialogue started with Qatar persuading Hamas and Witkoff asking Netanyahu to agree.
By January, a ceasefire deal was imminent with Hamas suddenly relenting.
Al Thani met Khalil al-Hayya, the deputy chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau, who gave up the group’s two major demands: complete Israeli pullout from Gaza and a permanent ceasefire. Hamas also agreed to confirm the names of the hostages who would be released in the first stage.
Meanwhile, Witkoff and McGurk warned and pressured Netanyahu, who dispatched the chiefs of Mossad and Shib Bet to Qatar. A few days before the inauguration, Al Thani, Witkoff, McGurk and the Israeli and Egyptian spy bosses reached a deal.
On January 15, Qatar announced the deal.
Biden’s team, Qatar and Egypt had slogged for more than a year to cement a deal between Hamas and Israel but failed. However, the warring sides suddenly agreed to a similar deal around a month before Trump’s inauguration—showing Biden in a poor light and boosting Trump’s image as a tough negotiator.
As Witkoff said in December, “It’s the president, his reputation and the things that he has said that are driving this negotiation.”
Now, Hamas has
offered talks with the Trump administration. “We’re prepared for a dialogue with America and achieving understanding on everything,” senior leader and Hamas Political Bureau’s first chairman Abu Marzouk told NYT after the ceasefire.
Even Marzouk credits Trump with “ending the war”. “If not for President Trump, his insistence on ending the war and his dispatching of a decisive representative, the deal wouldn’t have happened. Trump fully deserves credit for ending the war.”
The writer is a freelance journalist with more than two decades of experience and comments primarily on foreign affairs. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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