Irangate

Edward Said

  • The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey by Salman Rushdie
    Picador, 171 pp, £2.95, January 1987, ISBN 0 330 29990 5
  • Turning the Tide: US Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace by Noam Chomsky
    Pluto, 298 pp, £5.95, September 1986, ISBN 0 7453 0184 3

The ostensible reason for the enormous concern in America over the Irangate affair has been the question of whether the President and his National Security Council, together with the CIA and others, have been trading weapons for the release of the hostages held in Lebanon. The argument given in defence of what was done has been, from the start, that sending Robert McFarlane to Teheran was an attempt to exploit a ‘geopolitical opening’. Both versions of the same series of events have been criticised as an affront to the stated US policy of not dealing with terrorists or terrorist states. According to the categories devised by the State Department, Iran is a terrorist state.

You are not Logged In

  • If you have already registered login here
  • If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
  • If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
  • If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
  • If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions