Don't get me wrong. The Iran - Contra affair was a terrible circumvention of U.S. law and North deserved to go to prison and Reagan should have been impeached.
However, this post is a mischaracterization of that event.
This was part of an overall plan to get American hostages released.
That being said, we sold arms to Iran, who was fighting Iraq (a U.S. ally at the time), and one of the intermediaries we used was fucking Israel.
Yup, Israel helped us sell arms to Iran. So Iran can turn around and use them against an ally.
North was then made a fall guy.
I was younger when this happened but I recall, at the time, it was characterized as we just sold them parts for their airplanes and defensive arms.
Man, we just can't stop fucking our face with our own foot.