In the Iran-Contra Affair "the National Security Council (NSC) became involved in secret weapons transactions and other activities that either were prohibited by the U.S. Congress or violated the stated public policy of the government."  ”It was planned that Israel would ship weapons to Iran, and then the United States would resupply Israel and receive the Israeli payment.”  The president at the time, Ronald Reagan, “gave the impression of knowing little of what was going on.” Several investigations were conducted. Neither found any evidence that President Reagan himself was aware of the multiple programs’ details.“The funds were first sent to Saudi Arabia” . The Saudi businessman “Khashoggi was an important middleman in the arms deals behind the Iran-contra scandal”  .When we reflect upon this issue , we come to notice a few interesting details:The relations between the main players of this scandal were severely complicated. Iranian officials and citizens called the United States at the time “The Great Satan” and Israel “the Small Satan”. It was not unusual to hear declarations like “Israel should be annihilated”. The percentage of Iranian citizens who shared this view with Iranian officials was not small. The feelings that the Israelis and Americans harboured against the Iranians were not much different.When we talk about Saudi-Israeli or Saudi-Iranian relations, the landscape looks similarly messy.How can these countries meet and sign sensitive agreements when they are sunk in such grudge oceans?When we try to describe the relations between countries, we have to differentiate four different levels of power:1. The ordinary citizens who are not directly involved in political decision-making.2. The officials, i.e. the technocrats, ministers, government officers and so on. This level is supposed to care about the interests of the whole nation. However, the views and values of this level are not necessarily the same as that of most citizens.3. The military complexes and intelligence service agencies .4. A small circle of leaders and key persons who direct the military complexes and intelligence service agencies.  Of course, the four levels described above are not completely disconnected from each other. Important to remember here is: the relations between the countries at each level don’t necessarily reflect the relations at other levels.Just because the individuals of two countries have peaceful feelings towards each other, that doesn’t necessarily hold true for other levels. Vice versa, when war is declared between some countries, that doesn’t mean that the relationship between these countries’ top level power centers are in the same state of conflict. What we need to keep in mind is: the interests, values and views of each level are not the same. Thus, we shouldn’t talk about them collectively. Otherwise we would end up misunderstanding a lot of political issues today. It is too easy to be manipulated and fooled.When we say “the Americans invaded Iraq” we are committing a paradigm mistake, one which led to huge misconceptions. What happened was: the top level of decision-makers in the United States made the decision to invade Iraq. This means that the majority of Americans were not invading but were rather victims of this invasion. Furthermore, the US decision-makers responsible for this invasion conspired with figures from Iraq itself. These Iraqis were not among the invaded, but were in fact part of the invasion.Thus, the contradiction in international politics is not always between nations, i.e. Americans against Iraqis. Rather, the contradiction in many cases lies between, on the one hand, the politicians of all nations, and on the other, the general citizenry of those nations. Correcting this misconception is the first step towards understanding modern political events, and to finding solutions for the soaring wave of wars.