In December of 1979, Reagan was not the front runner.
Nope!
In fact, a poll in January 1980 showed Carter waaaaaay up on Reagan, by about 30 points.
Good thing for Reagan that someone got the hostage release delayed until Reagan's inaugration day.
LOL Where do you get this stuff from?
That theory has been out there for a while, and makes sense to a certain degree. But I tend to believe that the RNC didn't make a deal with Iran, but rather Khomeni held out from releasing the hostages until Jan 20 just to spite Carter.
Maybe not so much spite, but a way to save face. I agree with dazzleman that Khomeni clearly feared Reagan more than Carter. The changing of the guard was an opportunity to release the hostages before Reagan issued an ultimatum that would have pushed Khomeni into a corner.
One point the conspiracy theorists would have to address is that a Khomeni-Reagan deal would have meant that Khomeni owned Reagan. He would have the ability to destroy Reagan by publicizing the deal. So if there had been a deal, why did Khomeni not try to blackmail Reagan during, say, the latter years of the Iran-Iraq War when the U.S. was increasing support of Iraq?
