The profits from the secret sale of arms to iran in the 1980s were used to

Is to help the Contras in Nicaragua. The Contras were the different U.S.- sponsored and supported conservative radical gatherings that were dynamic from 1979 to the mid 1990s contrary to one side wing, communist Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction government in Nicaragua. 
The Contra War occurred in the Central American country of Nicaragua and kept going roughly from 1981 to 1988. The war started as a progression of uprisings against the Sandinista legislature of Nicaragua that that ousted the Somoza fascism in 1979.