General Discussion

And the hostages in play at that point had been kidnapped in Lebanon by Tehran-backed Hezbollah (not necessarily Iranian extremists directly, though certainly there were some of those there at the time).

Then there was the fact that some of the illegal proceeds from the sales were used to clandestinely fund the right-wing extremist Contra rebel group (also banned by Congress) who were working to overthrow the democratically elected, left-wing Sandinistas. How much either 'piece' was truly the main goal has been debated at length and I don't think it's "decided", but most experts seem to come down around 50% for each "purpose" from what I'm seeing.

I'm not sure there's all that much reason to even consider that particular episode as relevant to much going on right now, other than perhaps some theoretical reverse engineering done on those systems may have informed the creation of the weapons systems they're now using