American hostages held in Reagans benefit.

The issue of an "October Surprise" was brought up during an investigation by a House of Representatives Subcommittee into how the 1980 Reagan Campaign obtained debate briefing materials of then-President Carter. During the investigation (a.k.a Debategate), the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the House Post Office and Civil Service Committee obtained access to Reagan Campaign documents and discovered numerous instances of documents and memorandum referencing a monitoring effort for any such October Surprise. The Subcommittee, chaired by former U.S. Rep. Donald Albosta (D–MI) issued a comprehensive report on May 17, 1984, describing each type of information that was detected and its possible source. There is a section in the report dedicated to the October Surprise issue.

Proponents of the theory, such as Barbara Honegger, a researcher and policy analyst with the 1980 Reagan/Bush campaign, allege that William Casey and other representatives of the Reagan presidential campaign made a deal during two sets of meetings (July–August) at the Ritz Hotel in Madrid, with Iranians to delay the release of Americans held hostage in Iran until after the November 1980 presidential elections. It was also alleged that Reagan personally called Khomeini on the phone during this period and requested him not to end the hostage crisis before the elections.

Rigged elections.

It's obvious that the election in Iran was rigged. Yet Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei denies it was rigged and asks an interesting question: How could one rig 11 million votes?

You might also wonder WHY anyone would rig an election by such a large margin when it is so obvious that rigging it for a smaller victory would have been more clever.

I'm here to answer those questions.

But first, let's discuss what I call liar talk. It's a minor hobby of mine to detect lies by the way people choose their words. For example, liars often answer an accusation with a question, as in "What evidence do you have that I killed that drifter?" Innocent people might ask a question too, but it would be more along the lines of "What are you talking about?"

So when Khamenei asks, "How could one rig 11 million votes?" it sounds like a lie from a guy who knows exactly how he did it and hopes you don't. And it's possible that the huge margin of victory was a blunder. Perhaps a smaller victory was intended and some underlings overshot the mark. So a clever lie would involve asking how anyone could believe that a smart guy like the Supreme Leader could make such a mistake.

Allow me to describe how the election could be rigged by 11 million votes. It's a conspiracy theory and it goes like this. Imagine that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, identifies the Iranian who is in charge of their election process. They send him a secret message from someone allegedly speaking for the Supreme Leader: "The Supreme Leader wants you to rig the election for a landslide. But in case anyone finds out, he must have plausible deniability. Don't speak to anyone about this. Just pass the word to each of your local vote counters. Don't disappoint the Supreme Leader."

This conspiracy theory fits all of the data. It's not hard to imagine Mossad getting a fake message to one guy who has the power to rig the election. And it's not hard to believe that one guy would do as he believed he was told and keep the secret. Likewise, his underlings would keep the secret for fear of serious consequences.

Israel has the greatest motive for keeping the crazy-sounding President in office, in case they feel the need to attack Iran. You can bomb a country whose President says your own country should be wiped from the face of the map, but it's politically problematic to bomb a country that has a new president who speaks in a less menacing way.

In conclusion, the vote was rigged, and it was either a huge blunder by the Supreme Leader's minions, or a clever plot by someone who has an interest in destabilizing Iran.

If you are trying to decide which theory is more likely, a good place to start is with the track record of the current Iranian administration. How often have they lied to their own people or to the world? If you give examples of those lies in the comments, include the evidence, not just your gut feeling.

Written by Scott Adams