Phil Garber
10 min readAug 24, 2024
Photo by Emad El Byed on Unsplash

Possible trump Meddling In Gaza War Has Earmarks Of Reagan’s Plan To Delay Freedom for Iran Hostages

As quick as it made headlines, a story has evaporated that claimed that trump telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to get him to reject a Gaza ceasefire deal because an end to the war would benefit the campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful, Kamala Harris.

The story was first published by Axios and repeated by PBS reporter Judy Woodruff on Aug. 20. Axios reported that Trump had spoken with Netanyahu on August 14, a day before the ceasefire talks were to resume. Asked on August 16 whether he encouraged Netanyahu to accept the ceasefire deal, Trump said, “No, I didn’t encourage him…I did encourage him to get this over with…But have victory, get your victory, and get it over with. It has to stop. The killing has to stop.”

The Axios report quickly spread on social media and was shared numerous times on X. The PBS story referred to a Reuters story about the Axios report that said trump and Netanyahu discussed the Israeli hostages and Gaza ceasefire deal. A day later, PBS retracted the story because it said Axios had cited two unnamed sources that the conversation happened.

A cease fire or end to the war that has killed 40,000 Palestinians would be a huge political victory for President Joe Biden and in turn, for Vice President Harris in her efforts for the presidency. A cease fire would not only stop the slaughter but it also would reduce the rising threat of a wider war in the Middle East.

Interference in U.S. foreign affairs by a civilian would possibly violate the Logan Act, a federal law that prohibits ordinary citizens, like trump, from negotiating with foreign powers. American Muckrakers, a liberal political action committee (PAC) said it filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice, requesting the agency look into trump’s alleged violations of the Logan Act through, “negotiating, and/or interfering, with the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, regarding relations between the United States, Israel, and other parties.”

The worst bloodshed in the seemingly unending Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-governed Gaza strip has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians, while displacing almost the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.

Late last month, Netanyahu visited the U.S. and met separately with Biden, Harris and Trump. The details of the talks were not disclosed.

In May, Biden proposed a three-phase peace deal, which would include a release of hostages in Gaza and release of Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel. Cease fire talks have sputtered but were re-started recently. But last week, Hamas said that it would not take part in a new round of Gaza ceasefire talks in Qatar. Axios also quoted senior Israeli officials who said that the Israeli leader had endorsed the U.S. proposal, knowing that Hamas would reject it.

Denials of trump’s alleged call to Netanyahu were fast and furious, both from trump and Netanyahu.

The Jerusalem Post, an Israeli news outlet, reported in an Aug. 21, article that Netanyahu’s office categorically denied the claim, calling it a “complete lie.” The trump team responded that “PBS is making up fake stories.”

“The only thing President Trump has told the Prime Minister previously is ‘to get the war over with.’ Any assertion otherwise is fake news,” a spokesperson for Trump said.

In a post on X, Woodruff apologized for her report and said, “I want to clarify my remarks on the PBS News special on Monday night about the ongoing cease fire talks in the Middle East. As I said, this was not based on my original reporting; I was referring to reports I had read, in Axios and Reuters, about former President Trump having spoken to the Israeli Prime Minister. In the live TV moment, I repeated the story because I hadn’t seen later reporting that both sides denied it. This was a mistake and I apologize for it.”

Whether the conversation between trump and Netanyahu happened or not, Hamas has claimed that “Netanyahu is still putting obstacles in the way of reaching an agreement, and is setting new conditions and demands with the aim of undermining the mediators’ efforts and prolonging the war.”

Trump’s denial of trying to influence Israel to his political credit strains credulity as the former president and his campaign associates have a history of attempting to coerce foreign powers for electoral gains and then lying about it.

Most famously, at a July 27, 2016, news conference, trump called for Russia to help in his 2016 presidential campaign.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press,” trump said.

Trump was referring to emails he believed were damaging to and from his opponent, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Russian officials began to target email addresses associated with Clinton’s personal and campaign offices “on or around” the same day trump called on Russia to find emails that were missing from her personal server, according to the indictment from Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Russian state actors, reportedly under the direction of President Vladimir Putin, influenced the 2016 U.S. presidential election, with four major investigations confirming the findings. Mueller and a bi-partisan Senate report concluded that the trump campaign welcomed foreign assistance and violated U.S. election laws.

About 34 people were indicted or convicted in connection with Mueller’s investigation, including six former trump advisers.

Another instance of trump related involvement with foreign governments before he was elected came on Friday, Dec. 1, 2017 when former trump advisor, Michael Flynn, admitted that he asked Russia to delay a U.N. vote seen as damaging to Israel. Flynn was joined in the lobbying efforts by Jared Kushner, trump’s son-in-law and close advisor.

In the hours before the vote by the United Nations Security Council on Dec. 23, Flynn also called the U.N. missions of Uruguay and Malaysia, and Kushner spoke with Kim Darroch, the British ambassador to the United States, the Times reported.

The lobbying took place before the Jan. 20, 2018, inauguration of trump, who was known for his pro-Israel campaign rhetoric. The efforts failed and the Security Council adopted a resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlement building on land Palestinians want for an independent state.

A senior Israeli official told Reuters that Israeli officials had contacted trump’s transition team at a “high level” to ask for help after failing to persuade Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration to veto the draft U.N. resolution.

Another incident involving trump’s attempt to influence a foreign government came during the 2020 election campaign. Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter, while trump withheld congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine. The actions led to the first of trump’s two impeachments. The issue apparently did not violate the Logan Act because trump acted while he was president and not as a private citizen.

In 2019, trump claimed that former Secretary of State John Kerry had violated the Logan Act. Trump suggested that Kerry often “speaks to” the Iranians and “tells them not to call. That’s a violation of the Logan Act, and frankly he should be prosecuted in that, but my people don’t want to do anything that’s — only the Democrats do that kind of stuff.”

Kerry was never charged with violating the Logan Act.

Trump’s accusations came around the time that former national security advisor Flynn had violated the Logan Act during the presidential transition period. Flynn was not prosecuted for Logan Act violations but he resigned in light of reports that he had lied regarding conversations with Russian ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak. He was later pardoned of past crimes by trump.

Trump’s alleged attempts to influence Netanyahu and his subsequent denials is similar in many ways to the so-called 1980 “October Surprise” theory that representatives of then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan made a secret deal with Iranian leaders to delay the release of American hostages until after the election between the Republican Reagan and Democratic President Jimmy Carter, the incumbent.

The detention of 66 Americans in Iran, held hostage since November 4, 1979, was one of the leading national issues during 1980 and the goal of the alleged Reagan deal was to thwart Carter from pulling off an “October surprise” and political victory with a release of the hostages before the election.

Reagan won the election, and, on the day of his inauguration and minutes after he ended his inaugural address, the Islamic Republic of Iran announced the release of the hostages after 444 days in captivity. The hostage crisis had doomed Carter’s presidency.

The Reagan administration’s practice of covertly supplying Iran with weapons through Israel was an apparent quid pro quo for Iran delaying the release until after Reagan’s inauguration. The issue set a precedent for covert U.S.-Iran arms deals that would feature heavily in the subsequent Iran–Contra affair.

Both houses of Congress investigated and determined there was insufficient, credible evidence that Reagan had intervened to delay freedom for the hostages.

Several prominent individuals, however, said that members of the Reagan group had contacted Iran regarding the hostage delay. They included former Iranian President Abulhassan Banisadr, former Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes, former naval intelligence officer and U.S. National Security Council member Gary Sick and Barbara Honegger, a former campaign staffer and White House analyst for Reagan and his successor, George H. W. Bush.

The October Surprise allegations started to gain steam after an editorial column by Gary Sick was published in The New York Times on April 15, 1991. Sick was Carter’s Iranian expert on the National Security Council, and wrote, “I have been told repeatedly that individuals associated with the Reagan-Bush campaign of 1980 met secretly with Iranian officials to delay the release of the American hostages until after the presidential election. For this favor, Iran was rewarded with a substantial supply of arms from Israel.”

Sick, a retired naval captain who served on National Security Councils under Ford, Carter and Reagan, published a book in 1991 on the subject, “October Surprise: America’s Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan.”

Sick admitted that “the story is tangled and murky, and it may never be fully unraveled.” He was unable to prove his claims, including that, vice presidential candidate George H. W. Bush secretly left the country and met with Iranian officials in France to discuss the fate of the hostages.

In March 2023, The New York Times reported that former Texas governor John Connally, who had sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, travelled to several Arab countries and Israel between July 1980 and August 1980. Connally’s close associate Ben Barnes, who accompanied him on the trip, said that Connally told the Arab officials whom he spoke with to relay a message to Iran to the effect that “Ronald Reagan’s going to be elected president and you need to get the word to Iran that they’re going to make a better deal with Reagan than they are Carter.”

The Times reported that William J. Casey, the chairman of Reagan’s campaign and later director of the Central Intelligence Agency, allegedly met with representatives of Iran in July and August 1980 in Madrid leading to a deal supposedly finalized in Paris in October. The deal was that in return for the hostage release delay, a future Reagan administration would ship arms to Tehran through Israel.

The Times also reported on Dec. 29, 2019, that David Rockefeller, then chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, and his associates worked behind the scenes to persuade the Carter administration to admit into the U.S., Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the newly deposed shah of Iran who was one of the bank’s most profitable clients.

Rockefeller had known the shah since 1962, socializing with him in New York, Tehran and St. Moritz, Switzerland. By 1979, the bank had syndicated more than $1.7 billion in loans for Iranian public projects (the equivalent of about $5.8 billion today). The Chase balance sheet held more than $360 million in loans to Iran and more than $500 million in Iranian deposits, the Times reported.

The shah was Washington’s closest ally in the Persian Gulf. He fled Tehran in January 1979 in the face of an explosive uprising against his 38 years of iron rule. The shah sought refuge in America but Carter refused in hopes of forging ties to the new government and concerns over the security of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Carter refused the shah entry for the first 10 months of his exile but then reluctantly let him in the U.S. for medical treatment of cancer. The shah died on July 27, 1980.

But on Nov. 4, 1979, less than two weeks after the shah was admitted to the U.S., revolutionary Iranian students vowed revenge for the admission of the shah to the U.S. and seized the American Embassy in Tehran and it 50 Americans.

The Times reported that Rockefeller, a lifelong Republican, and his team strongly disagreed with what they considered to be Carter’s dovish foreign policy. Members of the Chase team included Henry A. Kissinger, the former secretary of state and the chairman of a Chase advisory board; John J. McCloy, the former commissioner of occupied Germany after World War II and an adviser to eight presidents as well as a future Chase chairman; a Chase executive and former C.I.A. agent, Archibald B. Roosevelt Jr., whose cousin, the C.I.A. agent Kermit Roosevelt Jr., had orchestrated a 1953 coup to keep the shah in power; and Richard M. Helms, a former director of the C.I.A. and former ambassador to Iran.

“(The Rockefeller group) collaborated closely with the Reagan campaign in its efforts to pre-empt and discourage what it derisively labeled an ‘October surprise,’ a pre-election release of the American hostages, the papers show,” according to the Times.

The Times also reported that the Chase team helped the Reagan campaign gather and spread rumors about possible payoffs to win the release, a propaganda effort that Carter administration officials have said impeded talks to free the captives.

“I had given my all” to thwarting any effort by the Carter officials “to pull off the long-suspected ‘October surprise,’” Rockefeller’s chief of staff, Joseph V. Reed Jr., wrote in a letter to his family after the election. The letter apparently was referring to the Chase effort to track and discourage a hostage release deal. Reed was later named Reagan’s ambassador to Morocco, the Times reported.