Reagan Decided to Sell Iran Arms

WASHINGTON -- President Reagan said last night that the controversial decision to sell arms to Iran was "mine and mine alone," and said two other American hostages in Lebanon would have been freed "if there had not been so much publicity" about the shipments.

At a news conference thoroughly dominated by questions surrounding the long-secret Iranian arms shipments, the president said he had made the right decision despite the furor that it provoked. "I don't think a mistake has been made," he said.

At his first news conference in nearly three months, Reagan said Secretary of State George Shultz will stay in his Cabinet post, despite his scarcely disguised opposition to the arms sale. "He has made it plain he would stay as long as I want him, and I want him," the president said.

Defending his arms deal, Reagan said, "I was not breaking any law" in authorizing the arms sale or ordering top aides not to provide Congress with immediate information.

Reagan thus moved to quell a controversy that has not only spawned criticism in Congress but also threatened his own credibility as president. A poll taken after Reagan's nationally televised speech last week on the arms shipments reported that only 14 percent of those surveyed thought he was essentially telling the truth when he said he was not trading weapons for American hostages.

Some critics remained unpersuaded.

Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, "I counted at least seven contradictions from what I have been told by his top aides. ... We have a strong foreign policy that's in serious disarray."

When a questioner asked whether the president had been forced on the defensive, Reagan bristled and said, "I don't feel I have anything to defend about."

"The decision for the operation is mine and mine alone," he said at a session so consumed with the Iranian issue that his summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev didn't come up until its midpoint.

"I have to believe there is reason for optimism," about a possible future superpower summit, the president said. "We are waiting for them to give us a date..."

Reagan strode into the White House East Room determined to address the Iranian issue head-on. In an opening statement, he promised to provide key members of Congress with all information about what he said were two sales he authorized.

But in response to a question, he said there may still be information he cannot divulge in public, and at one point denied any Israeli participation in the arms shipments.

But in an unusual written statement of clarification issued shortly after the news conference ended, Reagan acknowledged that despite his initial denials, "there was a third country involved in our secret project with Iran."

Senior administration officials earlier had identified that country as Israel and said the United States condoned an Israeli shipment of arms to Iran about the time American hostage Benjamin Weir was released and before the U.S. arms sales began.

"But taking this into account," Reagan said in his statement, "all of the shipments of the token amounts of defensive arms and parts that I have authorized or condoned, taken in total, could be placed aboard a single cargo aircraft. Any other shipments by third countries were not authorized by the U.S. government."

Reagan conceded that the shipments amounted to a waiver of his policy of retaining an arms embargo.