There were two large headlines across the top of the New York Times on January 20, 1981. One reported that Ronald Wilson Reagan had been inaugurated the prior day as the fortieth president of the United States. The second reported that the fifty-two U.S. citizens, held hostage for 444 days after the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Iran, had finally been released. The announcement that the plane carrying them out of Iran had taken off came just minutes after President Reagan took the oath of office.

The freeing of the hostages was the best backdrop that President Reagan could have asked for. He had used the phrase “It's morning in America” as his campaign theme, implying that a Reagan presidency would be a period of resurgence in the nation, which would show its strength both domestically and internationally. The image of the mullahs in Iran rushing to turn over the hostages rather than confronting a new and powerful president was exactly the one that the Reagan team hoped to convey as the new president took office. Unlike Jimmy Carter, this was not a president who could be pushed around.

Of course, the reality was quite different. There is little reason to believe that the Iranians turned over the hostages because they had any special fears of the new administration. The deal had been struck months earlier.