Penelope
Diamond Member
- Jul 15, 2014
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"Iran contacted the Carter administration in September 1980 with a proposal to end the hostage crisis," said Gary Sick, a Columbia University professor who has written two books about the Iran hostage crisis. "The U.S. made a proposal. Iran responded with an unacceptable offer just a day or two before the election. Afterwards, they nominated the Algerians to act as intermediaries. Those valuable discussions went on until literally the day or two before the inauguration, and they were settled by the Iranians caving in on a number of issues that were extremely costly to them. By my calculations, the Iranians ended up paying about $300,000 per hostage per day of incarceration."
The agreement that led to the release, as described by the New York Times 11 days after it occured, revolved around $11 billion to $12 billion in Iranian assets that Carter had frozen 10 days after the seizure of the U.S. embassy. It had been negotiated over the course of several months before Reagan's inauguration.
Our ruling
We can’t read the Iranians’ minds, but seven scholars of the period told us that Reagan’s foreign policy approach was either a minor factor in the release of the hostages or not a factor at all. The fact that the deal was negotiated entirely by the Carter administration, without involvement by Reagan or his transition team, seems to support the expert consensus. Romney made a claim that flies in the face of history and offered no evidence to support it. We rate the statement Pants On Fire.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/mar/07/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-says-iran-released-hostages-1981-becau/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algiers_Accords
The US chief negotiator was Deputy Secretary of StateWarren Christopher,[1] while the chief Algerian mediator was the Algerian Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammed Benyahia
The agreement that led to the release, as described by the New York Times 11 days after it occured, revolved around $11 billion to $12 billion in Iranian assets that Carter had frozen 10 days after the seizure of the U.S. embassy. It had been negotiated over the course of several months before Reagan's inauguration.
Our ruling
We can’t read the Iranians’ minds, but seven scholars of the period told us that Reagan’s foreign policy approach was either a minor factor in the release of the hostages or not a factor at all. The fact that the deal was negotiated entirely by the Carter administration, without involvement by Reagan or his transition team, seems to support the expert consensus. Romney made a claim that flies in the face of history and offered no evidence to support it. We rate the statement Pants On Fire.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/mar/07/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-says-iran-released-hostages-1981-becau/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algiers_Accords
The US chief negotiator was Deputy Secretary of StateWarren Christopher,[1] while the chief Algerian mediator was the Algerian Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammed Benyahia
