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One of the strongest tailwinds Reagan got upon entering office was the release of the Embassy hostages in Iran on the day of his inauguration. At a stroke, the Iranian regime removed the most blatant source of negativity (among many) that hobbled the late Carter administration, and freed up Reagan to pursue a proactive rather than reactive foreign policy upon taking office. But what if the hostages remained in captivity?

As the US military had already failed to solve the problem by force in the Desert One fiasco, what would Reagan's options have been vis a vis negotiating with the Iranians? Would a second military strike have been inevitable (perhaps butterflying the Grenada invasion two years later)? Especially in light of the later Iran-Contra scandal (where his administration secretly traded arms for money to finance the Contra death squads in Central America in defiance of the Democratic Congress) would an earlier arms-for-hostages deal have been in the offing, and would an earlier scandal have colored the "sunny" nature of his eventual reputation? Why, in the end, did the Iranians release the hostages when they did? Just a grudge against Carter? Or was the Iran-Iraq War a factor?
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