My oldest daughter, deceptively argumentative under her charming exterior, is a student at Stuyvesant High School in New York. Yesterday she recounted to me an argument she was having at school about why the American hostages were freed by the Iranians minutes after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated on January 20, 1981.She was contending that the Iranians calculated that they would suffer an unhappy fate if they waited any longer and perhaps be obliterated by the incoming President. Her interlocutor was giving all credit to Jimmy Carter for solving the crisis, pointing to the Algiers Accord as evidence.

I will admit to having forgotten that particular chapter of the disaster. In this document, negotiated by Carter’s Secretary of State Warren Christopher and signed by Iran and the United States on Carter’s last day in office, the United States gave the Iranians quite a bit of candy, if not the whole store.

Reading over the Algiers Accord, I am still not at all convinced it would fair to give Carter credit for resolving the crisis. It would be more accurate to say that his fecklessness throughout the 444-day ordeal came to a culmination in that moment, bringing the United States to a new low. Ronald Reagan had made it pretty clear that the ayatollahs would a high price for further dithering. Jimmy Carter rewarded them for holding out to the last possible moment of his term in office.