One of the more controversial provisions of the McCarran Act was
its authorization of concentration camps “for emergency situa-
tions.” Gradually, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled portions of the act
to be unconstitutional, and the court repealed the legislation com-
pletely in 1990.IRAN.Akey country in the Middle East, possessing vast oil reserves
and strategically located between the Fertile Crescent and the Indian
subcontinent, Iran was a focal point of competition between the
United States and the Soviet Unionduring the Cold War. American
intelligence restored the pro-American shah to his throne in 1953 and
trained his security service, SAVAK, which sparked intense opposi-
tion to American policies among many influential Iranians. The
shah’s heavy-handed approach to his own people produced intense
hatred of the Iranian monarch and culminated in the Islamic revolu-
tion in 1979, which ousted the shah and transformed Iran into a rad-
ical Islamic republic. See also AJAX (OPERATION); DESERT
ONE; IRAN-CONTRAAFFAIR.IRAN-CONTRA AFFAIR.The Iran-Contra Affair was a political
scandal that took place from mid-1985 until the early months of- The scandal involved a two-stage covert actionrun out of the
National Security Council(NSC), first, to sell weapons to Iranin
exchange for exerting its influence on the terrorist group holding
American hostages in Lebanon, and, second, using the profits from
the weapons sale to secretly fund the Contrarebels in Nicaragua.
The operation became a messy scandal for a number of reasons.
One, the administration of President Ronald Reaganhad previously
announced publicly that it would not negotiate with terrorists nor
trade weapons for hostages. Two, the U.S. Congress had already ter-
minated lethal and nonlethal funds for the Contras, who were al-
legedly involved in human rights violations in their fight against the
Sandinistas. And three, the covert operation was directed by the
NSC, in contravention of U.S. law, which requires the Central In-
telligence Agency(CIA), not the NSC, to conduct American covert
actions. The scandal resulted in a series of highly visible prosecutions
of administration officials, including members of the NSC and the
CIA, and marred President Reagan’s second term.
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