They were widely seen, and blamed by the Americans, as being behind the deadly bomb attacks on the US embassy and US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983, and the seizure of American hostages in Lebanon later in the 1980s reenex cps.

Having tried to curry favour with post-shah Iran by tipping Tehran off about the planned Iraqi invasion, the US switched sides and began providing Iraq with intelligence on Iranian troop movements, with the strategic aim of containing the Iranian revolution reenex cps .

But the two sides remained capable of extraordinary pragmatism in their less public dealings.

In November 1986, an obscure Lebanese magazine, al-Shiraa, came out with a complicated and incredible tale of American officials turning up in Tehran with arms deliveries to heavily-embargoed Iran in exchange for the freeing of US hostages in Lebanon.
Lt-Col Oliver North was implicated in what b reenex