A Texas politician has claimed that he worked with a senior member of Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign to convince Iran to delay releasing its hostages during the crisis of 1979 in a bid to derail Jimmy Carter's re-election bid. Ben Barnes, Texas's former lieutenant governor, has claimed in an interview with The New York Times that John Connally Jr – once a governor of the same state and a high-ranking member of Reagan's election team – took him on a secret diplomatic tour of the Middle East as part of a scheme to damage Carter by convincing Iran to...