Question

1. why did Gorbachev pursue glasnost and perestroika reforms?
~the soviet economy could not keep up with the arms race.
~the united states demonstrated that it had greater nuclear capacity.
~russian revolutionaries staged a violent uprising to overthrow the soviet government.

Answer 1

3. how did administration officials break the law during the Iran-contra scandal?
~by assisting communists in Iran to overthrow the Muslim fundamentalists
~by ignoring the supreme courts verdict that Iranian prisoners should not be tortured
~by selling weapons to the contras despite the congress forbidding it

Answer 2

For the first one
http://openstudy.com/study#/updates/4fca888ee4b0c6963ad480cc.

And the second one should be C. the selling of weapons

Answer 3

First one, hint, people started getting tired of the Soviet Union very quickly.

Answer 4

For the first question, the Soviets actually had more warheads than the United States at the peak of the Cold War. Today, that's still true with Russia, though both the US the they have been slowly downsizing their arsenals since the end of the Cold War. There was also no coup attempt in Moscow (Gorbachev came to power in a peaceful succession). So the only answer has to be that the Soviet economy could not keep up with the arms race which was very true. The Soviets had lots of weapons and nukes, but the country was on the verge of economic collapse in running that long and that hard for so long to outdo the "Great Adversary" (the United States). From that perspective, you could say that the United States literally outspent the Soviets.

For the second question, the US didn't assist communists in an attempt to overthrow Iran (and help the Soviets) and the Supreme Court answer doesn't make a lot of sense. What does make sense is the third answer -- that they sold weapon, but actually to Iran (not the Contras, but it's the only answer that gets close to the real answer). There was an arms embargo against Iran (no sale of weapons to Iran from the embargo's members) so when US officials secretly sold them weapons (in exchange for their help in freeing hostages), they broke the law. It became a huge scandal for the Reagan Administration.