WI: Iran-IRA instead of Iran-Contra

If it did happen, then America has lost it's greatest ally in Europe. I can imagine the public opinion of America would change in the eyes of many who often looked very favorably upon America because of the way our two countries have worked together in recent years.
 
What happens if the USA uses the profits of the arms sales to Iran to fund the IRA?

Since Northern Ireland is of no use to the US why would they do that? Never mind the fact that long before the Contra Affair the IRA were happily buying arms from Libya, not exactly the US's most favoured nation
 
You realise the IRA were vaguely Marxist, right?

Assuming Skippy the ASB takes over the head of Ronald Reagan (and quite a few others), the consequences would start with:

- NATO is gone, at least so far as the US is concerned. Most of the European powers had problems with similar terrorist groups - if the US is caught funding them, they'll hit the roof.
- Reagan gets impeached, anybody even vaguely connected with this gets in the sh*t as well.
- No idea what the Soviets would make of it, a lot of that will probably depend on exactly when this happened.
 
Hard to imagine that even from hard line Republicans you can find stupid enough whose support enemy of their ally.
 
Well that's a lot of your bases gone from around the world including lodging in your unsinkable aircraft carrier. Very ASB.
 
You realise the IRA were vaguely Marxist, right?

Assuming Skippy the ASB takes over the head of Ronald Reagan (and quite a few others), the consequences would start with:

- NATO is gone, at least so far as the US is concerned. Most of the European powers had problems with similar terrorist groups - if the US is caught funding them, they'll hit the roof.
- Reagan gets impeached, anybody even vaguely connected with this gets in the sh*t as well.
- No idea what the Soviets would make of it, a lot of that will probably depend on exactly when this happened.

Well that depends on which IRA you are talking about (mostly it was whatever might get them the most weapons).

But yes this would be a no-no on so many levels.
 
Honestly, I think this is actually just about possible provided that instead of Reagan you have a catholic, Irish descended and agressively anti-Colonial president in office.

Even then it's still highly unlikely, but you're certainly not going to have it happen with the OTL administration.
 
Honestly, I think this is actually just about possible provided that instead of Reagan you have a catholic, Irish descended and agressively anti-Colonial president in office.

Even then it's still highly unlikely, but you're certainly not going to have it happen with the OTL administration.

So you might need a POD before the 1980s at least...
 
So you might need a POD before the 1980s at least...

You need a US President with a lobotomy really, even if they were Catholic, anti-colonial (which is arguably not applicable to NI since it predates most colonies) and rabid plastic paddy, their administration would still point out that NI or even a united Ireland is of absolutely no value to the US.

You'd have to change NATO, arguable the US response to Soviet policies post WW2.

In the Cold War NI was a unimportant minor issue for the UK in comparison to the rest of the period.
 
Honestly, I think this is actually just about possible provided that instead of Reagan you have a catholic, Irish descended and agressively anti-Colonial president in office.

Even then it's still highly unlikely, but you're certainly not going to have it happen with the OTL administration.
The only way I can see it is if either:
1: (A) Kirkpatrick won out over the others or (B) someone beat the Monroe Doctrine into Reagan and the US protests the British retaking of the Falklands.
2: The UK protests the invasion of Commonwealth member Grenada.
 
The only TL where I've seen anything like this happening is Drew's Rumsfeldia, which should give an idea of just how out of sorts things would have to get to make the US government supporting the IRA as an act of policy...
 
The army will now be able to kill every member of the IRA they know about, and the U.S. cannot do anything about it. Or Maggie will give the green light to the UDF/UVF to do the work for them.
 
Youd almost need a communist usa.

Reagan wanted to fight commies so bad, hed break the law to do it. What makes an altPresident want to SUPPORT commies that badly?
 

GarethC

Donor
You'd be more likely to have IRA-Contra (or INLA-Contra, or similar).

Instead of selling TOW missiles via Israel to Iran to raise the money to fund the anti-Sandinista rebellion, you'd have the CIA supplying Afghan mujahedin-farmed heroin to whichever alphabet soup of paramilitaries were in the hard drugs trade this week, and sending their money to Central America to fund the contras.

So you're not funding Marxists, you're funding the war on drugs. Just, you know, the other side of it.

No, I don't think it's very plausible either.
 
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