 Desperate to win the presidency for the GOP in 1968, Richard Nixon went so far as to commit treason by torpedoing a peace deal with President Lyndon Johnson that that President Lyndon Johnson had worked out with the North and South Vietnamese. According to Abu Hassan Bani Sadr, then president of Iran, Ronald Reagan did the same thing by cutting a deal with Iran whereby they would hold on to the U.S. embassy hostages until after the 1980 presidential election.