This did not, however, stop support and funding for the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, or approval for General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq's broad program of Islamization in Pakistan. It also did not prevent the Reagan administration from arming Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, at a point when it appeared that Iraq might win the war. The covert operation that came to be known as Iran-Contra involved secretly supplying arms to Iran and using the proceeds to fund the right-wing Contras in Nicaragua against the popular Sandinista government. The logic behind this continued support for Islamists was that the main enemy was the Soviet Union: if Islamists could be used to weaken this Cold War enemy, so be it.

XREF: Connects to the broader Cold War logic of backing anti-Soviet forces regardless of ideology, a pattern seen across multiple covert operations.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 247