Talk:1953 Iranian coup d'état/Archive 11

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Proposal for new subsection

Every account I've read of the coup tells of how foreign diplomats and officials thought Mosaddeq was unstable. We should include something about that in the article. --BoogaLouie (talk) 19:27, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Perception of Mosaddeq

In his book Countercoup, CIA officer Kermit Roosevelt describes Secretary of State John Foster Dulles as saying `so this is how we get rid of that madman Mosaddeq`, after being shown the CIA's version of a plan for a coup. Various British and American officials complained to each other that the Iranian prime minister was "impervious to reason", "a sick leader", posessing "megalomania ... now verging on mental instability," and "one of" Iran's "most sick leaders.` This has been attributed to their unfamiliarity with Iranian culture and with Mosaddeq's "visionary political modus operandi" but also to Mosaddeq's "inability or refusal to understand how the world looked to Western leaders."

Didn't you make this proposal twice before? Why do you keep copy/pasting your old posts? If you want to recycle a section of the talk page, you should do so by bringing back the entire section from the archives, so the entire discussion can be visible to the readers. --Kurdo777 (talk) 20:24, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Once before but the subsection is a little different from the other proposed one and there's some new editors now. But since you asked, here is the old discussion, (if you can call it that). --BoogaLouie (talk) 23:25, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

The fact that Kermit Roosevelt (who killed himself) called Mossadegh a madman is unimportant. We should not rely on accounts by participants, many of which were written decades after the events. The Four Deuces (talk) 05:48, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

The importance of the quotes is not that they prove there was something wrong with Mosaddeq, but that they prove his US and UK enemies thought there was something wrong with him. --BoogaLouie (talk) 21:23, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

"BBC fiction work"?

How is the documented fact that BBC Persian broadcast the go-code for the coup a "fiction work"? Why was the paragraph about BBC's role in the coup deleted? --Kurdo777 (talk) 20:08, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

This bit is trivial, and the source has no scholarly verification.

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20050822.shtml

How can you insist upon keeping this BBC radio show URL as a reference when you are simultaneously hammering at other editors for references to published books? Binksternet (talk) 18:17, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Here is what you had:

• The BBC spearheaded Britain's propaganda campaign, broadcasting the go-code launching the coup d'état against Iran's elected government.

For starters, the BBC, if they broadcast propaganda, which was not discussed prior to this section nominally about the initial execution of the coup plan, cannot truly be said to have 'spearheaded' such a campaign. BBC officials would instead have taken instruction from UK government officials. Talking about a propaganda campaign at this section is too late in the story.

About a 'go-code', you place it trivially at BBC's doorstep. Why is this important? You also repeat the already too-often repeated phrase 'elected government'. Binksternet (talk) 18:37, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Besides the BBC article, is there ANY other source that states the BBC broadcast the go-code? I couldn't find any. If there are no other sources, then it's at best trivia.--Work permit (talk) 00:09, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I took a long look myself for sources, and found nothing. It appears the BBC go-code is not seen as notable by scholars. I have removed the mention. Binksternet (talk) 18:36, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Gasiorowski mentions the code too. --Kurdo777 (talk) 04:11, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Excusing the coup

The latest edits by BoogaLouie and Binksternet are very biased and selective. They're removing sourced information about the post-coup repression of ordinary people or BBC's role, while adding OR/POV qualifiers like how Fatemi had called for a republic, and that somehow excuses why he was mob-lynched and excuted. (this is called synthsizng) Or implying that Shah was "lenient", his agents did not torture anyone, and only killed one person after the coup (100% false, as already proven on this talk page). These edits go against WP:OR and WP:NPOV. --Wayiran (talk) 21:17, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

The edits you reverted en masse are of the ongoing discussion. You are welcome to take part. I am restoring the condition of the article prior to your reversal. Binksternet (talk) 22:07, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

If the edits you complain about said, "It is understandable that Fatemi was executed because he called for a republic," or anything like it, they would be OR/POV ... but they do not. They give background about him just as his execution is background about the fallout of the coup. --BoogaLouie (talk) 22:49, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Sources for Mossadegh's house arrest

1. Mohammad Mossadegh: political biography‎ by Farhad Dība, p, 13: "Mossadegh was sentenced to imprisonment and then house arrest at Ahmadabad. where his wife only visited."

2. Iran: the illusion of power‎ by Robert Graham: "Mossadegh was given three years' imprisonment. He then was allowed to live in his country house near Tehran in what amounted to house arrest until his death"

3. Iran and its place among nations‎ by Alidad Mafinezam, Aria Mehrabi, p, 29: "Mossadegh was imprisoned for three years, and lived afterward for over ten years under house arrest."

And 609 more sources saying the same thing here. The academic consensus is that he was under house arrest. Weather or not, he could visit the neighborhood grocery store in his village, is irrelevant to the fact that he was under house arrest. Aung San Suu Kyi can, and does leave her house too, under the regime supervision, but nobody has ever claimed that she is not under house arrest because of that. --Kurdo777 (talk) 22:03, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

People call it house arrest because that was what Mosaddegh accepted. He did not push out to the boundaries of his confinement, the village, but he could have. We can only guess why he stayed in his house: perhaps SAVAK would question and investigate any in the village who talked to Mosaddegh, and the old man wished no harm of that sort. Who knows? It was not officially house arrest, it was officially village confinement. There is no breezy phrase in English that matches the specific terms of his confinement, so people, naturally, go with what they know. Binksternet (talk) 22:13, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

That's WP:OR, who says "that was what Mosaddegh accepted" or it was "officially village confinement"? He was under house arrest, that's what all the sources say, and that's what we'll report here. No government who puts its opponents under "house arrest", would officially call it house arrest anyways. --Kurdo777 (talk) 22:28, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Mosaddegh was taken to Tehran for medical care before he died. Why are you insisting on the wording that he was placed under house arrest "for the rest of life"? Binksternet (talk) 22:31, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

What's your point? So what? People who are jailed or under house arrest are taken to hospital for medical care, all the time. --Kurdo777 (talk) 22:35, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

The point is house arrest implies not leaving your house. If he went to Tehran he left his house. As a compromise I propose changing "placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life" to "placed under house arrest (confined to his home village except for medical care in Tehran) for the remainder of his life" --BoogaLouie (talk) 20:03, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

wikipedia article on house arrest would indicate the term is used for a rather loose set of restrictions. A more restrictive form of house arrest is called "home confinement". The most restrictive is called "home incarceration", which would constrain an offender to their home constantly. Understandably, this term is a western concept.--Work permit (talk) 00:06, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

New tag on citations

I've tagged the article for inappropriate or misinterpreted citations which do not verify the text. As we work through the article, citations should be checked to verify they reflect the text in the article.--Work permit (talk) 04:37, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, a fine idea. However, in practice, we should not take out text that differs slightly from its sources, as was done here in this edit by Skywriter. Rather than being found solely on page 48 of Kinzer, the information was present on pages 33 and 48. Extra text not found in Kinzer could have been fact-tagged on its own, not deleted. Fact tagged text that has been tagged for less than a few days should not be deleted—ample time ought to be allowed for tracing that text back to the sources which were originally used. Binksternet (talk) 15:31, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Latest problems in the lead

The article and the lead are now as bad as they've ever been. What was the reason for the coup? There's not one word about fear of Soviet expansion. But there is this line: "The tangible benefits the United States reaped from overthrowing Iran's elected government was a share of Iran's oil wealth.[19]"

There is a huge quote from a 1979 edition of Foreign Policy magazine

"... the shah's regime reflected American interests as faithfully as Vidkun Quisling's puppet government in Norway reflected the interests of Nazi Germany in World War II. The shah's defense program, his industrial and economic transactions, and his oil policy were all considered by most Iranians to be faithful executions of American instructions. Ultimately, the United States was blamed for the thousands killed during the last year by the Iranian army, which was trained, equipped, and seemingly controlled by Washington. Virtually every wall in Iran carried a slogan demanding the death of the "American shah."[20]

The quotation marks are screwed up, but the main problem is it was written in the heat of the 1979 revolution (`Virtually every wall in Iran carried a slogan demanding the death of the "American shah."` must have been a wall or two that didn't.) not as part of project devoted to the coup like the Kinzer or Gasiorowski books. In short its WP:UNDUE

The lead is huge and packed with excitable anti-shah prose "pressured the weak monarch while bribing street thugs, clergy, politicians and Iranian army officers .... Mosaddegh's supporters were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured or executed" [one was murdered one was executed] "cruel and authoritarian."

And some is just not accurate "In the wake of the coup, Britain and the U.S. selected Fazlollah Zahedi to be the next prime minister of a military government," no they planned for him to be PM before the coup. --BoogaLouie (talk) 21:09, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

If you do not restrict the sources that can be used then you cannot complain about using the FP article. You cannot even complain about the factual accuracy - that is original research and we cannot know how widely held any viewpoints are. The Four Deuces (talk) 17:48, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Don't you think that the bar ought to be pretty high for a four-line-long quote in the lead???? Something scholary, measured, and not thirty-years-old? I am complaining about the accuracy of the statement "selected Fazlollah Zahedi to be the next prime minister ... in the wake of the coup" when he was selected before the coup. Why are you calling this a "viewpoint" or "original research"? There are documents that say when he was chosen. Is it original research to loook up a fact in a book? --BoogaLouie (talk) 18:16, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I trimmed the quote back to just one sentence. It was straying wa-a-ay too far into the tail end of the Shah's rule, into 1979. It was also guilty of introducing reductio ad Hitlerum by bringing up the Nazi comparison. Not needed in the lead section. Binksternet (talk) 18:34, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Richard Cottam as a source

Richard Cottam is used as a source in the lead section, to support a direct quote taken from his 1979 magazine article in Foreign Policy. Cottam is a fine source, but the 1979 article must be seen as one of Cottam's 'pop' pieces, written in a non-scholarly manner for a wider audience, at an inflammatory time. In his mid-twenties, Richard W. Cottam was a Fulbright scholar studying in Tehran for one school year 1951–1952, and after earning his PhD he wrote propaganda news pieces for the CIA in 1953, to be published in Iranian newspapers preparatory to the coup.

Cottam died in 1997 after a long career as a political science professor at the University of Pittsburgh. An obituary characterized him as "a scholar of Iranian politics ... and an advocate of political liberalization in Iran." Also, "he told his superiors that the coup was a serious mistake." After the coup, Cottam was stationed at the American embassy in Tehran for two years 1956–1958 for the purpose of keeping in touch with National Front people he had befriended earlier, and to try and sway the Shah toward benevolent treatment of the NF and its liberal ideas. Among other quotes we can take from Cottam, there is this shocker:

• "Regardless of foreign participation, Mossadegh could not have been overthrown if significant elements of the population had not lost faith in his leadership."

This quote, if used, would shift the tone of the article. I believe it should be used. Binksternet (talk) 19:25, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

The quote is in line with other statements by Abrahamian and Kiddie

• "The easy success of this coup can be explained by two factors, the widening gap between the traditional and middle classes within the National Front; and the increasing alienation of the whole officer corps from the civilian administration." (from: Abrahamian, Ervand, Iran Between Two Revolutions by Ervand Abrahamian, Princeton University Press, 1982, p.273-4)

• "The coup could not have succeeded without significant internal disaffection or indifference, but without outside aid it would not have occurred." (Keddie, Nikki R., Roots of Revolution, Yale University Press, 1981, p.140) --BoogaLouie (talk) 21:16, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

• "The palpable fear of a communist takeover changed the political alignment that dominated Iranian politics. The religious establishment, worried about communism, switched sides, as did key segments of the middle classes and commercial interests, and some nationalist leaders. The political realignment promoted concerted action by the alliance between the monarchy and the Iranian military in close cooperation with the United States and Britain. The result was a military coup that toppled Mosaddeq's government, ended the democratic interregnum," (Ali Gheissari, Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Democracy in Iran: history and the quest for liberty Oxford University Press, 2006, p.53) --BoogaLouie (talk) 16:43, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Gee! I thought there might be a lot of complaints and stuff about "cherry picking," but it looks like nobody has any problems with using these quotes! --BoogaLouie (talk) 17:14, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

The lead is horrible, at best a bad joke

As my header says, the lead is just horrible and depressing. Horrible for all the required citations backing up confused, stitched together, POV polemics. Depressing that not even the most basic facts can be agreed upon without citations to specific authors (much less just citations). Should we tackle it now, or should we tackle it after tackling the rest of the article? Ideally, the article will start to state objective facts (like when the coup happened) without all the bylines and quotes that the rest of the article still seems to require. At the very least, the lead should NOT introduce "facts not in evidence" in the main article.--Work permit (talk) 02:55, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Totally agree (as expressed above). I think the binksternet approach of sorting out the article first before the lead may be best. Then we will have all the facts on hand to back up what should be in the lead.

Any opinions on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat#Richard_Cottam_as_a_source above? --BoogaLouie (talk) 16:27, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Mistake in the article - confusion of two different elections

In the 1950s section is really bad. There is no mention of the big fight over the War Minister that lead to the vast increase in Mossy's power (see here) and there is an embarassing factual mistake confusing the spring/February 1952 majlis/parliament election and the 1953 referendum. Here it is:

In the summer of 1953, Mosaddegh announced a referendum on the question of whether the majlis should be dissolved and another election held. Gasiorowski later wrote "The referendum was rigged which caused a great public outcry against Mosaddegh".<ref name="Gasiorowski"/> Kinzer, however, wrote that "Mosaddegh was legally entitled to take this step as long as the eighty seated members did not veto it, which they did not. He could also claim a measure of moral legitimacy, since he was defending Iran against subversion by outsiders. Nonetheless, the episode cast him in an unflattering light. It allowed his critics to portray him as undemocratic and grasping for personal power.

Kinzer's line that "Mosaddegh was legally entitled to take this step as long as the eighty seated members did not veto it," refers not to the 1953 referendum but to his shutting down voting before the provincial returns were in in the 1952 election.

What did Kinzer say about the 1953 election? That it was "a disastrous parody of democracy" ...

Mossadegh announced that he would hold a referendum on the question [of disolving the Majlis] and pledged to resign if voters did not vote to oust the existing Majlis. The referendum, hurriedly convened at the beginning of August, was a disastrous parody of democracy. There were separate ballot boxes for yes and no votes, and the announced result was over 99% in favor of throwing out the Majlis. The transparent unfairness of this referendum was more grist for the anti-Mossadegh mill. Mid-August found Roosevelt and his team of Iranian agents in place and ready to strike." (Kinzer, Stephen, All the Shah's Men : An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, Stephen Kinzer, John Wiley and Sons, 2003, p.165)

I propose a subsection Political crises to rewrite at least part of the 1950 section. --BoogaLouie (talk) 18:43, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I see some small grammar changes I would make, but your proposed section looks good as a replacement candidate. Binksternet (talk) 20:18, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

There is no need for a "replacement". The chronological error, can be corrected by simply switching the two sentences. I have fixed it.--Kurdo777 (talk) 03:52, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

It's well written and clear. I support adding it. Rather then its own section, it could simply replace paragraphs In the Majlis election through In the summer of 1953, . There are grammatical changes (for example, "overwhelmingly positive response). I agree the current section is poorly written, with too many hodge podge quotes.--Work permit (talk) 04:29, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I also agree the current section is poorly written, but the solution is not to replace it with BoogaLouie 's WP:CHERRY/ half-truths/synthesized/POV-ridden proposed section which is selective and misleading. The only relevant part of that section to this discussion, is 4th paragraph about the referendum, which can be added to the article. --Kurdo777 (talk) 10:49, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

It would be great if you acknowledged the extent of your own cherry-picking of facts so that BoogaLouie's actions can be revealed as an attempt to balance the article. Your selectivity in establishing a pro-Mosaddegh POV must be balanced by facts that put Mosaddegh in more accurate light. The day editors here stop accusing each other of cherry-picking will be a good one. Binksternet (talk) 14:14, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones Do not accuse others of "selectivity" or being "pro-" anything, when your own role in this article, has been anything but neutral. Rather, you have only acted as a "Yay-Sayer" for BoogaLouie's actions and his violations of WP:NPOV, WP:Cherry, [[WP:WP:NOTSOAPBOX], and other core Wikipedia policies, while openly admitting to commiting these violations and harboring a bias, and poorly justifying it as "an attempt to balance the article" --Kurdo777 (talk) 07:55, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Kurdo if the proposed section is "WP:CHERRY/ half-truths/synthesized/POV-ridden," where are the non-cherry-picked sources? The "balanced set of information" that overwhelms my alleged unrepresentative fact picking? You have accused me repeatedly of WP:CHERRY picking, synthesizing and POV. WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE? --BoogaLouie (talk) 15:00, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Edits by Kurdo have distinguished between the 1952 majlis and 1953 referendum but there is still nothing about why Gasiorowski says the referendum was rigged. Nothing about the riots of Siyeh-i Tir in the capital where 29 people were killed that were a big victory for Mosaddeq. Nothing about his gaining and getting an extention on emergency powers, or the National Front people and groups (Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani, along with the three groups representing the bazaar - the Society of Muslim Warriors, the Toilers Party, and the Fadayan-e Islam) who turned against him. (check the timeline here)

Kurdo do you have any answer to my question: where is the "balanced set of information" that proves my sources are unrepresentative, cherry-picked facts? --BoogaLouie (talk) 20:46, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I replaced the subsection. if there are any other facts that should be introduced, feel free to add it.--Work permit (talk) 08:52, 9 April 2010 (UTC)O

I have reverted the replacement of the subsection . There was no WP:consensus for replacing the section with BoogaLouie's synthesized/POV-ridden proposed section that is a violation of WP:COATRACK. --Kurdo777 (talk) 07:35, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

And I have reverted your unthinking reversion! You are mistaken about whose edits have been made—they were mine and Work Permit's. My edits were composed by me from my reading of Abrahamian and Shiels, not by BoogaLouie. Your knee-jerk reversion took out not only my additions of how Mosaddegh's political power began to falter, they took out spelling, grammar and reference formatting corrections I made. In short, your reversion was not worthy of the constructive editing process that has been bringing this article to a more balanced viewpoint. Binksternet (talk) 08:01, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I am not mistaken, Work Permit had copy/pasted BoogaLouie's sub-section. Your "additions" were mostly fringe POV edits ("steps toward dictatorship"!?), or adding a new sub-section to the article without a WP:Consensus. And who is Frederick L. Shiels, and why is his opinion presented as a fact?--Kurdo777 (talk) 08:18, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

POV is, by definition, in the eye of the beholder. What I did was concentrate and summarize several pages of Abrahamian to show the reader that all was not happiness and gaiety in the final year of Mosaddegh's rule. Why would Abrahamian have pages of text about these facts? More to the point, why would we ignore those pages and write about other things, turning our heads away from the negative side? It is not me calling Mosaddegh "dictatorial", it is Kashani and his buddy Qonatabadi. A politician assuming emergency powers is always to be watched for dictatorial tendencies, and these guys did not fail to notice. They did not want leftist, liberal and atheist changes to the government, and they did not want dictator insisting upon such changes. Binksternet (talk) 08:31, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Binksternet, your summary of p. 276 is one-sided and non-neutral. Your summary presents one side of the argument and not the other. Your recap sides with the jihadists who seized power in 1979 as does your comment above. In doing so, you misrepresent what the secondary source, the historian, Abrahamian wrote. This is an easy call. Here is the link to p. 276.[1] This violates Wikipedia policies on neutrality. Skywriter (talk) 17:13, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

NO, POV is when you try to push your point of view on an article, by any means possible, and that includes writing an essay using out-of-context one-lines from someone like Abrahamian to make conclusions he does not make, or citing the opinion of an unknown author like Frederick L. Shiels as a fact, or citing a primary source. Here is a list of the main issues with Booga/your proposed section:

1. Who is Frederick L. Shiels and why is his opinion presented as a fact? --Kurdo777

What does the citation you deleted say? Shiels, Frederick L. (1991). Preventable disasters: why governments fail. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 88. ISBN 0847676234. http://books.google.com/books?id=K66iLmZzpjYC&pg=PA88. Retrieved April 9, 2010. "Regardless of foreign participation, Mossadegh could not have been overthrown if significant elements of the population had not lost faith in his leadership." —Quoting Richard Cottam, PhD.

Do you know who Richard Cottam is? I believe you or skywriter put a very long quote by him in the lead. --BoogaLouie (talk) 23:33, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

2. Fadayian Islam were never a part of National Front. --Kurdo777

The text that you deleted doesn't say that. It says they were supporters of Mosadeq.

Do you deny they were at first supporter and then turned against him? --BoogaLouie (talk) 23:33, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

3. Why is the opinion of an unknown and minor figure named Qonatabadi given any prominence? --Kurdo777

Abrahamian calls him "a clerical leader" of the National Front on page 275 of Iran Between Two Revolutions. --BoogaLouie (talk) 23:33, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

4. Why is Abrhamian's work cherry-picked and put together, to leaf the reader into conclusions that he does not make? --Kurdo777

Kindly give some evidence that there is cherry picking going on. Repeating over and over again that another editor has cherry picked does not make it true. What evidence do you have that quotes or statement from Abrahamian in the text you deleted are unrepresentative of what he said? --BoogaLouie (talk) 23:33, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

5. Why is a news clip from 1950's ( a primary source) cited as a source? --Kurdo777

Please give a satisfactory rational for to all these issues/questions raised, and get a clear consensus for these edits, before attempting to restore the questionable edits. --Kurdo777 (talk) 21:25, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

These additions are thoroughly sourced to Abrahamian and Cottam, the latter quoted in a Shiels book. They are on solid ground, not unreliable. You ask me why Qonatabadi is quoted, I ask you why Abrahamian saw fit to quote him? Are you a better judge than Abrahamian? These selections give an idea of the push-back that came from Iranians during Mosaddegh's proposals for a change in government policy. He was not universally accepted as a hero; there were Iranian members of interest groups that did not want the changes he and his ministers were proposing. It does not require a British bribe to imagine a fundamental cleric opposing women's right to vote. Binksternet (talk) 03:25, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

I took out a giant quote of Kinzer because his version conflicts significantly from Abrahamian's. Kinzer says Mosaddegh was widely regarded as a hero and Abrahamian lists and names the many and varied special interest groups that did not regard Mosaddegh as a hero. I see no reason why Kinzer's popular book should win the reliability contest against Abrahamian's more scholarly book. When we have significant conflicts in our sources, we don't delete one and show the other; we show both, explaining the conflict and the context. In doing so, giant quotes are not prescribed. Instead, short comparisons are more useful. Binksternet (talk) 03:36, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

BoogaLouie, read WP:Talk, do not insert your comments in the middle of other people's comments. You're tempering with my comment. --Kurdo777 (talk) 15:06, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

I have pasted your signature on to each of your five questions on the "main issues with Booga/your proposed section" to distinguish it better from my answers.

BTW, do you have any replies to my answers? --BoogaLouie (talk) 15:57, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion for 1950s section

Words cannot convey my appreciation of the work, you, work permit and binksternet, have done on the article.

Here is a suggestion for a couple of sentences on the pre-coup cia mischief to be added to the Emergency powers section before the last paragraph on "Worried about the UK's other interests in Iran ..."

contributing to an unknown degree to the alienation with Mosaddeq's policies was Operation TPBEDAMN, a CIA program originally designed in the late 1940s to `counter` (what the CIA called) `the vicious covert activities of the USSR.` TPBEDAMN employed both "grey propgaganda", in the form of "newspaper articles that portrayed the Soviet Union and the Tudeh as anti-Iranian or anti-Islamic, described the harsh reality of life in the Soviet Union, or explained the Tudeh's close relationship with the Soviets and its popular-front strategy;" and "black" operations, such as bribes to "right-wing nationalist organizations" and religious figures, and even more unsavory actions such as "provoking violent acts and blaming them on the communists, and hiring thugs to break up Tudeh rallies." By at least summer of 1952, however the Tehran CIA station had targeted not only the Tudeh but Mosaddeq and the National Front, despite the Truman administration's policy of supporting Mosaddeq. The Tehran-based CIA believed "Mosaddeq's refusal to settle the oil dispute" with the British "was creating political instability in Iran, making a Tudeh takeover increasingly likely."

While Mosaddegh attempted to cope with the loss of support by interest groups and subversion by the CIA, Britain's boycott had cut off revenue to the Iranian government and devastated Iran's economy. Iranians were "becoming poorer and unhappier by the day".

(the last sentence is a rewritten version of the sentence currently in the article.) The source of the information is the Gasiorowski book: Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran, Edited by Mark J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne, Syracuse University Press, 2004

(The "unknown degree" is based on this comment by Gasiorowski:

"It is not clear how much of an impact these activities or the parallel activities carried out by the Rashidians had in undermining Mosaddeq. Kashani, Baqai, Makki and other National Front leaders had begun to turn against Mosaddeq by the fall of 1952, and they had conclusively broken with him by early 1953 ... this was precisely the time in which these activities were being carried out. However, these individuals were very ambitious and opportunistic and clearly had their own motives for breaking with Mosaddeq. Although new sources of financial support and hostile articles in the press may have contributed to their decisions to turn again Mosaddeq, it seems unlikely that they were as important in this regard as the personal motives of these individuals. Moreover, the CIA officers who carried out these activities disagreed among themselves about their impact..." (Gasiorowski, p.243-4)

What do you think?

PS: Kurdo I am going to keep asking you, what is the evidence that I have written a "synthesized/POV-ridden proposed section that is a violation of WP:COATRACK"???? --BoogaLouie (talk) 17:44, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Replies

These words are in single quotes in the above submission. `counter the vicious covert activities of the USSR.` Whose words are they? Skywriter (talk) 17:30, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Gasiorowski is quoting the CIA. --BoogaLouie (talk) 14:49, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

The section which booga submitted above can not be evaluated because page numbers are absent and many different authors contributed. It is not possible to determine if the claims are taken out of context or quoted accurately. In explaining the basis, Booga wrote: The source of the information is the Gasiorowski book: Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran, Edited by Mark J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne, Syracuse University Press, 2004 --Skywriter (talk) 17:51, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

The page numbers are there but not the title of the book. For those of you who haven't read Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran, each chapter is by a different author (I think Gasiorowski wrote two chapters) so <ref>Byrne, p.217</ref> refers to a part of the book written by Byrne. I've added Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran to all the citations to make that clear. --BoogaLouie (talk) 14:49, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

In his book on client states, Gasiorowski recommends against using the CIA's TP prefix for countries where it is spying. footnote 48, p. 54. Skywriter (talk) 17:43, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, "his book on client states", U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah: Building a Client State in Iran, was published in May 1991 and

Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran (from whence I got the text about TPBEDAMN), was published 13 years later in May 2004. ... So maybe Gasiorowski changed his mind and decided TP was Okay. --BoogaLouie (talk) 14:49, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Booga wrote: While Mosaddegh attempted to cope with interest groups shifting against him and CIA subversion, Britain's boycott had cut off revenue to the Iranian government and devastated Iran's economy.

Reply: Due to grammatical errors, the above sentence is not understandable. Skywriter (talk) 17:46, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

See if you like this better: While Mosaddegh attempted to cope with the loss of support by interest groups and subversion by the CIA, Britain's boycott had cut off revenue to the Iranian government and devastated Iran's economy. Iranians were "becoming poorer and unhappier by the day".

I've made the change in the proposed text above. --BoogaLouie (talk) 14:49, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Kennett Love in NYT 1953

I restored Kennett Love's bit about voting booths, which appeared in the New York Times. It was deleted by Skywriter with the edit summary "Removing suspect primary source. CIA coup plotter admitted to heavily influencing & controlling what appeared in daily newspapers." The source article, "Mossadegh Voids Secret Balloting", is a secondary source, a newspaper article, and is quite suitable for our use. If anybody has a source saying that such voting booth practices were not employed, bring that source forward and rebut the newspaper account. Don't delete the newspaper just because its author was involved. Binksternet (talk) 14:50, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

A 1950's newspaper clip is an outdated primary source. --Kurdo777 (talk) 15:02, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

A 1953 The New York Times article is a secondary source, per WP:SECONDARY, because of its editorial review policy. Love's article would not have hit the press without review. Outdated? Funny, the coup is outdated by that same amount. How about using the word contemporary?

Again, let's see a rebuttal, not a deletion. Binksternet (talk) 15:07, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

And please, stop your reversions. The article is improving by consensus, and your reversions are pure edit warring. Binksternet (talk) 15:09, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

You have no WP:consensus, and you're the one who has violated WP:3RR on this page on several occasions. --Kurdo777 (talk) 15:14, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

(unindent)Bink, if you continue to feel strongly about this, find it in one of the detailed histories written on this topic. Newspaper articles are the first draft of history and are not to be relied upon for events that occurred more than half century ago. Skywriter (talk) 17:36, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree, we should should use one of the detailed histories, not newspapers, when discussing the issue of secret ballots. A cursory glance through sources: [2] [3] shows this should not be difficult.--Work permit (talk) 23:58, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Introduction of error and irrelevance

This edit re-introduces a block quote that is irrelevant to the coup and re-introduces error with the clam that the election was 1951 and not 1952. http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat&diff=355547048&oldid=355473780

I intend to remove the block quote again and to correct the date again. This is an opportunity for anyone who believes this should not be done to state the factual reasons here. Thanks. Skywriter (talk) 17:29, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

We agree on 1952. The issue in dispute now is late or early 1952.

On page 136

Kinzer says "In June [1952] after 80 candidates had been certified as winners of seats in the 136-seat Majlis, his cabinet voted to halt the elections." Sound like elections lasted until June.

On page 269 Abrahamian says "Realizing that the opposition would take the vast majority of the povincial seats, Mossadeq stopped the voting as soon as seventy-nine deputies - just enough to form a parliamentary quorum - had been elected. The Seventeenth Majles convened in February 1952." Sound earlier. But neither sounds like "late 1952" you insist on Skywriter. --BoogaLouie (talk) 21:54, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

You incorrectly quote me. I said 1952 not 1951. I made no suggestion as to time of year. Skywriter (talk) 12:07, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

The only fact you changed in the edit is "early 1952" to "late 1952". (Yes, a spelling is changed and there is a block paragraph you deleted earlier saying "removing blockquote from minor source promoting its own history in Iraq w/ minor emphasis on Iran".) What does your edit summary say here? "Identify your source. This is a fact issue. You have introduced factual error. Please stop." What is the factual error? --BoogaLouie (talk) 15:33, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

There were various reverts. I changed the year only, from 1951 to 1952, and for the second or third time removed the irrelevant blockquote from the British museum of engineers. The factual error was the use of 1951. Several people came in and reverted to 1951. One of them may have entered early and late. I don't know. My concern was with the year, which was incorrect. I could not understand why people kept reverting to 1951, which is factual error. Skywriter (talk) 20:12, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Iranian support for the coup

Currently the article has no mention of the motivation of Iranians who opposed Mosaddeq. I found this (below) in a book about "the quest for democracy in Iran" since the 1906 constitution, and thought it might be summarized and added.

"The opposition to Mosaddeq, led by the Shah, conservative politicians such as prime ministers Ahmad Qavam and General Ali Razamara .... and commanders of the military, most notably General Fazlollah Zahedi (d.1963), also believed that the British position was unjust and illegal. However, they thought that Mosaddeq's idealism had led to a Don Quixote foreign policy. ..."

"Regardless of the merits of Iran's position, it was unrealistic that the country would be able to win its case; in `charging the windmill,` Iran was more likely to jeopardize its national interests. Only five years after the Soviet attempt to separate Azerbaijan and Kurdistan from Iran, the monarchy and its allies believed that Iran's interests lay in close ties with the West to ward off the Soviet threat. Where as Mosaddeq saw Britain as the foreign devil, they saw Britain and its imperialism as the lesser evil. ..." (p.53, Democracy in Iran: history and the quest for liberty, By Ali Gheissari, Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Oxford University Press, 2006. --BoogaLouie (talk) 19:34, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

It is a minority view and if you wish to present it then you first must explain how the supporters of the shah are normally seen. The Four Deuces (talk) 20:43, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Well if nothing else, it's just one view. See if you find the proposed subsection below satisfactory. --BoogaLouie (talk) 20:57, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Mossadeghs opponents also received bribes. "journalists, editors, preachers, and opinion members" split $150,000. Zahedi got $135,000 to "win additional friends", and members of the majlis got $11,000/week. How much "motavation" did that supply? [4]--Work permit (talk) 02:00, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I'll add it. --BoogaLouie (talk) 21:21, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Proposed subsection

Iranian coup supporters

Iranian opponents of Mosaddeq have been described as including "religious leaders and preachers and their followers, as well as landlords and provincial magnates"; "conservative politicians such as prime ministers Ahmad Qavam and General Ali Razmara .... and commanders of the military, most notably General Fazlollah Zahedi ... led by the Shah." They have been described as forces that would "have been crippled without substantial British and later U.S. support," while authors Ali Gheissari, Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr say "it would be mistaken to view the coup as entirely a foreign instigation with no support" in Iran.

Observers differ on the opponents motivation for supporting the coup. Mark J. Gasiorowski describes them as "very ambitious and opportunistic." Another author calls Mosaddeq's Iranian opponents elites "determined to retrieve their endangered interests and influence, and unconcerned with the lasting damage to Iranian patriotic sensibilities and democratic aspirations." Money was involved with the US CIA paying out $150,000 after March 1953 to "journalists, editors, preachers, and opinion members", giving Zahedi $135,000 to "win additional friends", and paying members of the majlis $11,000 a week.

Other authors (Ali Gheissari, Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr) describe the opponents as agreeing with Mosaddeq that the "British position was unjust and illegal," but believing that after the 1946 attempt by the Soviets to separate Azerbaijan and Kurdistan from Iran, "Iran's interests lay in close ties with the West to ward off the Soviet threat."

Footnotes

--BoogaLouie (talk) 20:48, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Huge quotes redux

Once more, we are seeing an over-reliance on huge quotes. Huge quotes are often a cop-out—they are being used in this way to present one observers words when many observers have published their words. Several problems exist with block quotes: they tend to turn off the reader, who may well skip over the quote, they take up space with a level of detail perhaps unnecessary to the article, and they present one writer as the last word. We need to chop up these quotes and do some honest copy editing. I have begun some of this work; there is more to do. Binksternet (talk) 20:17, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Changing the organization of the coup

There is a huge US Role section which gives some background on the cold war as the US motivation. But the cold war is as much a part of the background to the coup as oil (motivation for Iran to nationalise and for the UK to plot against Mosaddeq), or Iran being "trapped between the advances of two great imperial powers." Shouldn't something about the cold war (AND the Iran crisis of 1946!!) be in the Background section? And why a huge US role section but no Iranian supporters section or UK role section? I haven't time to work on this now. More Monday. --BoogaLouie (talk) 23:28, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Selective editing

The following critique refers to this edit[5] which may or may not have been originally placed by this particular editor. This is material quoted directly from this edit, and then fact-checked.

In July 1952 Mosaddegh resigned after the Shah refused to accept his nomination for War Minister, a position traditionally filled by the Shah. Mosaddegh appealed to the general public for support and received an overwhelmingly positive response. (And then what happened? Did Pahlavi appoint a new prime minister. Yes. Why was this left out? Answer: non-NPOV text based on ideology not reliable sources. Street rebellions took place because the Pahlavi appointed a new prime minister. Why was this left out? Answer: same as above: non-NPOV) After five days of mass demonstrations, 29 killed in Tehran, and "signs of dissension in the army," the Shah backed down and asked Mosaddegh to form a new government (and agreed to allow the civilian government to appoint its defense minister. Why was this left out? Answer: same as above: non-NPOV) <Ref>Abrahamian p.270</ref><ref>Mackey p.187-210</ref> This was an enormous personal triumph for Mosaddegh over the Shah, and Mosaddegh capitalized on it (this is non-neutral wording that leaves out enormously significant detail. e.g. What exactly was Britain doing at the time? Why was this left out? Answer: see above: non-NPOV Was this cause and effect as the editor who entered this has written? NO Inconvenient facts that do not follow the party line are left out.) by asking the majlis for "emergency powers for six months to decree any law he felt necessary for obtaining not only financial solvency, but also electoral, judicial, and educational reforms. ("What was the context? what was going on in Iran at the time? The historians tell us but the editor who added this bunk does not. Why not? As above: non-NPOV) <ref>Abrahamian, 1982, p.273</ref> In this way, Mosaddegh dealt his opponents the Shah, the military, "the landed aristocracy and the two Houses of Parliament ... a rapid succession of blows." <ref>Abrahamian, 1982, p.272</ref>

The above makes it sound as though the PM had a spat with Pahlavi, quit, appealed to the public (which he definitely did not. According to Kinzer, he was entirely silent) and after the fictitious appeal by Mossy that is entirely made up by Wikipedia editor, rioting occurred. This is so far from the truth, it is (fill in your own metaphor). What was left out of the context made up much larger sections of the history that historians considered important--by writing extensively about it-- than what is included above. Context is crucial and the way the article now reads, in the early 1950s section is misleading and out of context.

All that is absent from the entry above explains the history of what transpired and yet, the biased view now in Wikipedia leads readers to draw very different conclusions. So long as selective facts, biased pieces of information, are entered into this article that do not tell the full story the way historians tell it, but instead the way certain editors with very strong ideological viewpoints want it to be told, Wikipedia loses credibility. Remember that the entire world can read this article and that the facts can be verified. p. 137 from Chapter 9 of Kinzer's All the Shah's Men is quoted where convenient, and then the circumstances entirely left out, making it sound as though Mossadegh was an undemocratic dictator. How did that happen? Chapter 9 has a lot of hard facts that are left out of this account. It is the view of certain people editing this article who have voiced their personal opinions that Mossy was a communist dictator. Do the historians who are the subject matter experts share that view? Absolutely not. They say Mossadegh's brief, 28-month long government is the only democracy Iran has ever known. Certain editors of this article substitute their own personal viewpoints for that of historians, reliable sources, and as a result, what transpired over those 28 months is skewed in Wikipedia beyond all recognition.

We have talked on this page about the bias certain editors have against Mossadegh and one editor even justified that bias by claiming bias brings balance to the article. No, it does not, and no, it does not meet Wikipedia criteria for neutral editing. How do we know of this bias? Easy one editor built a page with every negative remark he could find about Mossadegh and is steadily adding it to this article.

More than a year ago, the argument was about whether oil was a factor in the coup. It was a fierece fight and now, finally, the role of oil is somewhat represented. Previously it was buried in an avalanche of anti-communism. Some editors claim the primary motive was opposition to communism, and for a very long time, this article did not progress thanks to that strong ideological viewpoint. Is that non-NPOV viewpoint still a big factor in why this article is as bad as it is? Yes.

Here's an example from this talk page.

These words are in single quotes in the above submission. `counter the vicious covert activities of the USSR.` Whose words are they? Skywriter (talk) 17:30, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Gasiorowski is quoting the CIA. --BoogaLouie (talk) 14:49, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Now here, the editor wants to add text to the article and to anonymously quote the CIA in a controversial manner without identifying the source. That is a variation on highly selective choosing of what facts to include and which to leave out in order to press a non-NPOV.

The question remains. In light of the bias and the flagrant non-NPOV over a long period of time, how can anyone who does not share the non-NPOV but who reads the history books maintain wp:good faith? Skywriter (talk) 03:06, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

There has been selective editing by all parties. Many times, the editor doesn't "see" the POV he's creating because, well, everyone has a POV. I'm guilty of selective editing myself, Kurdo called me out and said "hey, you forgot the following paragraphs" and added them. My edit was just pure ignorance, I don't really know enough to have a POV. But I've found wp:agf doesn't require the other editor to actually BE acting under good faith. Only that, by ASSUMING it, you can move the article along. I had cut and pasted Boogie's paragraph because I felt it was reasonably clear and could be expanded on (the previous entry was just a hodge podge set of statements that didn't hang together). In your above statements, you've shown excellent additions that will make the history even more clear. Like you said, we all worked together on the "motives" section, and now it's in reasonable shape. Kurdo thinks there are "too many words" devoted to communism, I think there's a bit too much Gasiorowski, and we should include information from Gavin and Steve Marsh's article instead. But at the moment, its not really a priority.

In the oil section, I understood the two opposing views and coould help. To be honest, I don't even understand what the opposing views are here, because I don't even understand the timeline. Perhaps before discussing views, can we agree on "bare facts". For example, Mossy resigned in July, 1952. The shah appointed Ghavam Saltaneh. There were riots. Ghavam resigned, and the shah reappointed Mossadegh. And so on. Can we just list out "bare facts", that require NO intrepretation of them (ie don't call Ghavam an imperialist stooge of the anglo-saxons). From there, we can fill in "agreed reasons" (Mossadegh resigned because he wanted to be defense minister. After the riots the shah acquiesced). We can then build from there, with what I may call "different intrepretations". He resigned three weeks after his trip to the hague. I imagine things were spinning out of control by then, what with the brits destabilizing him and his economy going into the tank, so he wanted full control over the military? What do you think?--Work permit (talk) 03:42, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I should add that my ignorance is at this point is a conscious decision. You all are very familiar with the topic, I hope I can help best by "remaining dumb" :)--Work permit (talk) 03:53, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Work permit, while we all appreciate your contributions and innocence, please borrow one or more of these books from the library. Many of the references to the historian Gassiorowski are to his second book, which he and Malcolm Byrne edited and to which they both contributed a few articles. The individual authors should be cited and they are not in this article. This conflation is, of course, confusing.

I agree with you that a timeline -- a chronology -- would tell this story logically and factually so long as the role of all of the players is examined, unlike what exists currently. Mossadegh didn't resign because he wanted to be a defense minister. Mossadegh argued to Pahlavi that the civilian government and not the monarchy should control the Iranian military. Shortly after the popular rebellion that forced Pahlavi to fire Qavam, who was prime minister for four days, the British Navy seized the oil tanker, Rose Mary, which was carrying Iranian oil to Italy.

The book edited by Gasiorowski and Byrne (Mohammad Mossaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran) consists of analytical articles by an array of historians. The history of the coup that Gasiorowski wrote is titled U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah: Building a Client State in Iran (Cornell University Press: 1991). As I wrote in the Bibliography section, this book, "Traces the exact changes in U.S. foreign policy that led to the coup in Iran soon after the inauguration of Dwight D. Eisenhower; describes "the consequences of the coup for Iran's domestic politics" including "an extensive series of arrests and installation of a rigid authoritarian regime under which all forms of opposition political activity were prohibited." Documents how U.S. oil industry benefited from the coup with, for the first time, 40 percent post-coup share in Iran's oil revenue."

This book contains the most detailed explanation of the changes in foreign policy from Truman to Eisenhower administration. And I apologize for not adding it several weeks ago when I said I told you I would. Forest fires have gotten in the way.

The other most widely accepted historical accounts by scholars of this subject are:

• Elwell-Sutton, L. P. Persian Oil: A Study in Power Politics (Lawrence and Wishart Ltd.: London) 1955. This classic, written by a professor in Scotland with a specialty in Iranian studies, is the nearly contemporaneous account that describes what led up to the coup, the coup itself and its aftermath. He is a good writer and this makes a pleasing read.
• Stephen Kinzer's All the Shah's Men is a relatively recent, popular and easiest to read account that incorporates CIA and M16 documents not available to Elwell-Sutton nor to Gasiorowski when he wrote his history published in the last decade of the 20th century.
• M16 by Dorrill (in bibliography) contains lots of tantalizing detail from the British perspective.
• Kent State history professor Mary Ann Heiss's heavily footnoted Empire and Nationhood: The United States, Great Britain, and Iranian Oil, 1950–1954, (Columbia University Press,1997) draws from previously unused British, American and Iranian documents.
• Mostafa Elm's book is of particular interest because he was Pahlavi's oil minister and he tells the story from that unique vantage point. Any of these books --or many of the others in the bibliography -- would give you a basis for adding content on a neutral basis.

Thanks. I do own Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran as well as All the Shah's Men. I've used them or general fact checking, have refrained from reading them, for fear of being "just another editor". Perhaps I will.--Work permit (talk) 02:18, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

The ready-to-eat paragraphs processed by editors on separate pages -- or at various points in the history of this talk page-- are suspect in that they are selected passages taken grotesquely out of context. The editors who created those pages have not built trust over the last few years and instead, have repeatedly attacked editors who object to the lack of neutrality in those selections, much like the paragraph I took apart at the beginning of this section. Contrary to the attacks, which I expect to begin very soon, this is not about personalities, it is about content and non-neutral additions of selected text that sides with a particular viewpoint to the exclusion of the detailed histories that tell the full story. Skywriter (talk) 08:10, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

PS: What is the reference to which you refer here? "I think there's a bit too much Gasiorowski, and we should include information from Gavin and Steve Marsh's article instead"

Gavin and Marsh are both up the the "references" section, under "fear". They are peer reviewed journal articles--Work permit (talk) 02:18, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Which citations to Gasiorowski are "too much"? What would you take out?Skywriter talk) 08:15, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm just pointing out that 6 of the 11 paragraphs (almost) exclusively use Gasiorowski as a source. I would combine some paragraphs on communist threat by Gasiorowski, keep the rebuttal to the oil paragraph, tighten up the client states (perhaps putting them at the end since the notion of client state I believe post-dates the coup), and add materials from Gavin and Marsh, who argue that Eisenhower was actually following trumans policies--Work permit (talk) 02:18, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I am restoring the original version. There was no WP:consensus for any of the POV-laden changes to the 1950's section. The section in its current form violates several Wikipedia core polices like WP:NPOV, WP:Cherry, and WP:UNDUE. Using questionable cherry-picked material and giving undue weight to a single aspect of a subject to push a POV, is not OK in Wikipedia.--Kurdo777 (talk) 05:51, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Agree, it is important to maintain neutrality in this article and to stick with reliable sources. The Four Deuces (talk) 12:35, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Collegiality

Skywriter, instead of a long rant on the non-NPOV of some editors ("NO Inconvenient facts that do not follow the party line are left out" ... "The ready-to-eat paragraphs processed by editors ... are selected passages taken grotesquely out of context. The editors who created those pages have ... have repeatedly attacked editors who object to the lack of neutrality in those selections" ),
why don't you simply put on the talk page what you think is missing from the article (e.g. mention of the new prime minster appointed by Mosaddeq), and give the sources that support it. Why don't you try to persuade editors instead of accusing them of non-neutrality? If the editor ignores you or gives a lame excuse, then you might have grounds for accusing.

I for one am certainly happy to add (at least some of) what you complained was left out of the edit. --BoogaLouie (talk) 15:53, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I have previously added fact tags to particular phrases and have raised the same point on this talk page. The fact tags have been ignored and it is close to impossible to obtain simple, direct answers to simple, direct questions from you. An example is the simple direct question for which there is now an entire section. You were asked three times whether these are your words, When the shah refused to accept his nomination, Mosaddeq resigned and appealed over the heads of the deputies directly to the public and still there is no simple, direct answer. Skywriter (talk) 20:29, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Here you are accusing me:

Here's an example from this talk page.

These words are in single quotes in the above submission. `counter the vicious covert activities of the USSR.` Whose words are they? Skywriter (talk) 17:30, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Gasiorowski is quoting the CIA. --BoogaLouie (talk) 14:49, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Now here, the editor wants to add text to the article and to anonymously quote the CIA in a controversial manner without identifying the source. That is a variation on highly selective choosing of what facts to include and which to leave out in order to press a non-NPOV.

Why not just say: "You haven't made it clear that it was the CIA talking and you should."? You would be right and I would have changed it. (You did ask who it was talking but didn't complain it was important to add the source.) --BoogaLouie (talk) 17:06, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

The problem with your edits is that you splice together phrases from different sections and different subjects to fit your non-{NPOV]] version of what reliable sources say. This results in original research. We're asking transparency of you, Boogalouie, and no original research. When you string together a word here and a phrase there to build your argument, then fail to use page numbers, what you add becomes useless. Worse, it becomes subject to the suspicion that you are adding original research. Wikipedia policy is that edits must be verifiable. Ground zero is "Always include the source. No original research." Add nothing to the article that is not clearly sourced. At of this late date, do you need to be reminded to cite your sources? If so, I am happy to remind you. We hope you don't need further reminders.

We would rather see long quotes than the stringing together of a word here and phrase there to create a new synthesis. Long quotes can be rewritten or summarized. Synthesis is original research.Skywriter (talk) 20:29, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Page numbers were given. there was no original research. what are you talking about? --BoogaLouie (talk) 21:38, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

"ready-to-eat paragraphs processed by editors"

As for

The ready-to-eat paragraphs processed by editors on separate pages -- or at various points in the history of this talk page-- are suspect in that they are selected passages taken grotesquely out of context. The editors who created those pages have not built trust over the last few years and instead, have repeatedly attacked editors who object to the lack of neutrality in those selections ... )

I've spent a lot of time pasting and typing up from stratch the quotes from books (sometimes cited by you as proof that greed for oil and not the fear of the Soviets was the motivation for the coup) in hopes that they would be helpful to the editing and prove the points I thought were lacking in the article. Same with the proposed revised article.

No, Boogalouie, we are not going to edit or comment on your alternate article. I realize you want this article to reflect your original research but it won't happen because it violates Wikipedia guidelines. Skywriter (talk) 20:33, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

So as one who is accusing me of "hav[ing] not built trust over the last few years and instead, have repeatedly attacked editors who object to the lack of neutrality", I ask you Skywriter, how are the quotes "grotesquely out of context"? what is the context they grotesque?

Kurdo, for the umpteenth time, how is "the section in its current form violat[ing] several Wikipedia core polices like WP:NPOV, WP:Cherry, and WP:UNDUE."? How is it "Using questionable cherry-picked material and giving undue weight to a single aspect of a subject to push a POV"? --BoogaLouie (talk) 16:42, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Boogalouie, why should anyone cooperate with you when you decline to answer directly and forthrightly the simple question in the next section? Skywriter (talk) 21:32, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Getting facts straight

And please get your facts straight before accusing others:

.... The above makes it sound as though the PM had a spat with Pahlavi, quit, appealed to the public (which he definitely did not. According to Kinzer, he was entirely silent) and after the fictitious appeal by Mossy that is entirely made up by Wikipedia editor, rioting occurred.

Here is a description of "entirely silent" Mossy's "fictious appeal" from Abrahamian (p.270-271, Iran Between Two Revolutions). You didn't even have to get the book, it's available here on the internet:

When the shah refused to accept his nomination, Mosaddeq resigned and appealed over the heads of the deputies directly to the public

In the course of recent events, I have come the realization that I need a trustworthy war minister to continue my national mission. Since His Majesty has refused my request, I will resign and permit someone who enjoys royal confidence to form a new government and implement His Majesty's policies. In the present situation, the struggle started by the Iranian people cannot be brought to a victorious conclusion.

For the first time, a prime minister had publicly criticized the shah for violating the constitution, accused the court of standing in the way of the national struggle and had dared to take the constitutional issue directly to the country.

The appeal received an enthusiastic response. ..." [p.270-271, Iran Between Two Revolutions By Ervand Abrahamian]

--BoogaLouie (talk) 16:17, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Whose words are these, yours, Boogalouie OR Abrahamian?

When the shah refused to accept his nomination, Mosaddeq resigned and appealed over the heads of the deputies directly to the public Skywriter (talk) 18:21, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

If you had any doubts you could have checked the link --BoogaLouie (talk) 18:37, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I did. I searched for those words and they did not come up. Is it correct to conclude these are your words? When the shah refused to accept his nomination, Mosaddeq resigned and appealed over the heads of the deputies directly to the public Skywriter (talk) 19:02, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

The link above leads to these two pages. You click on page 271 and you will see what I quoted above. --BoogaLouie (talk) 19:24, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Why are you reposting the same link? Why don't you answer the question directly. It is a simple question, repeated here for the third time. Are these your words? When the shah refused to accept his nomination, Mosaddeq resigned and appealed over the heads of the deputies directly to the public

A simple yes or no suffices. Skywriter (talk) 20:07, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I thought I was helping you with some very basic internet skills you might profit from in the future. Anyway, are you going to apologize to the editor (Binksternet I think) for accusing him of posting something false when it was you who made the mistake? --BoogaLouie (talk) 20:13, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

What game are you playing? You have not answered the direct question, leaving the impression that those are your words and not of the historian. Skywriter (talk) 20:59, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

No, I have not left that impression. The words are Abrahamian's. Are you going to apologize to the editor (Binksternet) for accusing him of posting something false when it was you who made the mistake? --BoogaLouie (talk) 21:34, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Whatever argument is being attempted here is completely wrong. There is no need to trace specific words that have perhaps been in the article at some time or another... what we do as encyclopedia editors is recast the words of our sources in common language, summarizing (in many cases) the positions of the sources. It is destructive to try and pin some particular sequence of words on an editor, especially if sources agree with the concept that has been expressed, as in this case. Mosaddegh did appeal to the people, to regain a political seat of power. Binksternet (talk) 03:01, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand the cross examination. the quote in question is clearly in the link provided. What am I missing?--Work permit (talk) 03:28, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

This is why I suggested you obtain at least one of the histories from the library, Work permit-- so you can separate fact from fiction. The link you provide and that was provided to you does not say Mosaddeq ... appealed over the heads of the deputies directly to the public

It does not say that at all. I would be happy if you could show that those words are there but I know they are not, and that is exactly what is so reckless about, not only this insertion, but so many of the "ready-to-eat" non-neutral POV paragraphs one certain editor holds at the ready to slap into the article. Skywriter (talk) 09:40, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes it does! Here is an even more specific link to that quote in Iran Between Two Revolutions. I went to google books and searched in quotes "appealed over the heads of the deputies directly to the public".

Skywriter would you please stop this and admit you were wrong and try not to make reckless accusations in the future! --BoogaLouie (talk) 15:31, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Chapter 9 of Kinzer's All the Shah's Men examines what transpired in quite a lot of historical detail. The British insisted that Pahlavi appoint Qavam the prime minister to succeed Mossadegh. Pahlavi resisted; the Brits were adamant. Pahlavi complied. p. 139.

bottom of p. 139

"In the end the Shah succumbed to British presure, as he was wont to do and accepted Qavam. Foolishly believing that he had won a firm mandate, Qavam immediately began issuing harsh proclamations declaring that the day of retribution had come. He denounced Mossadegh for failing to resolve the oil crisis and for launching "a widespread campaign against a foreign state." Iran, he declared, was about to change. "This helmsman is on a different course," he declared in his first statement as prime minister. Anyone who objected to his new policies would be arrested and delivered into "the heartless and pitiless hands of the law."

Many Iranians did not realize that Mossadegh was really out of power until they heard Qavam deliver this proclamation over the radio. It triggered an explosion of protest. Crowds poured onto the streets of Tehran and other cities, chanting, "Ya Marg Ya Mossadegh!" (Death or Mossadegh!) Qavam ordered the police to attack and suppress them, but many officers refused. Some joined the protesters and were joyfully embraced.

This spontaneous outburst was, above all, an expression of support for Mossadegh's decision to confront the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Many Iranians, however, were also drawn to him because of his commitment to social reform. Mossadegh had freed peasants from forced labor on their landlords' estates, ordered factory owners to pay benefits to sick an injured workers, established a system of unemployment compensation, and taken 20 percent of the money landlords received in rent and placed it in a fund to pay for development projects like pest control, rural housing, and public baths. He supported women's rights, defended religious freedom, and allowed courts and universities to function freely. Above all, he was known even by his enemies as scrupulously honest and impervious to the corruption that pervaded Iranian politics. The prospects of losing him so suddenly, and of having him replaced by a regime evidently sponsored from abroad, was more than his aroused people would accept.

On July 21 National Front leaders called for a general strike to show the nation's opposition to Qavam and support for Mossadegh, "the only popular choice to lead the national struggle." Within hours, much of the country was paralyzed. Ayatollah Kashani, who had learned that Qavam planned to arrest him, issued a fatwa ordering soldiers to join the rebellion, which he called a "holy war against the imperialists." Tudeh militants, still angry at Qavam for engineering the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Azerbaijain in 1947, eagerly joined the fray with cries of "Down with the Shah! We Want a People's Republic."

Qavam and the Shah were shocked by this rebellion and responded by calling out elite military units. Soldiers opened fire on protesters in several parts of Tehran. Dozens fell dead. Young military officers, appalled by the carnage, began talking of mutiny. The Shah had completely lost control of the situation. His only choice was to ask for Qavan's resignation. Qavvam submitted it at four o'clock that afternoon. Upon receiving it, the Shah sent for Mossadegh.

Their meeting was unexpectedly cordial. The Shah said he was now prepared to accept Mossadegh as prime minister and give him control of the war ministry. He asked if Mossadegh still wished to maintain the monarchy. Mossadegh assured him that he did, presuming of course that kings would accept the supremacy of elected leaders.

"You could go down in history as an immensely popular monarch if you cooperated with democratic and nationalistic forces," he told the Shah.

The next day the Majlis voted overwhelmingly to reelect Mossadegh as prime minister. Qavam's term had lasted just four days. His fall on "Bloody Monday" was a huge, almost unimaginable victory for Iranian nationalists. It was an even greater personal triumph for Mossadegh. Without having given a single speech or even stirred from his home, he had been returned to power by a grateful nation.

The next day brought another piece of electrifying news. The World Court had turned down Britain's appeal, refusing to be drawn into the oil dispute. In London, the Daily Express carried the banner headline "Mossadegh's Victory Day." It was that and much, much more." (the preceding is verbatim, leaves nothing out, and ends in the middle of p. 141 of Kinzer's All the Shah's Men

Kinzer's account is consistent with the other standard histories noted in the article bibliography.

So you see, Work permit, when I asked Boogalouie three times whether he had written the words Mosaddeq... appealed over the heads of the deputies directly to the public or whether Ervand Abrahamian had penned them, it was to pin down WP:OR, which is original research that is not permitted on Wikipedia. In the link provided, those words do not appear and the historian, Abrahamian did not write them because he would have known they are false. The deliberate introduction of false information into Wikipedia is serious. Three times Boogalouie did not answer the question of whether he had originated those words, and then, even tried to throw suspicion on another editor, Binksternet, for writing those words. This is passive aggression that prevents the writing of an honest article.

This saga follows on the heels of the recent discussion of that page of "ready-to-eat," unbalanced, everything negative quotes about Mossadegh compiled by the same editor who now wants us to believe that Mossadegh took his dispute with Pahlavi public.

One more thing. The quote you cite from the page that was provided to you and that I repeat here the link provided --do you know what that is?

It also appears on p. 135 of All the Shah's Men. It is Mossadegh's letter of resignation given to Pahlavi, the monarch. Here's the complete quote:

"Under the present circumstances it is impossible to conclude the final phase of the national struggle," he wrote to the Shah. "I cannot continue in office without having responsibility for the Ministry of War, and since Your Majesty did not concede this, I feel I do not enjoy the confidence of the Sovereign and, therefore, offer my resignation to pave the way for another government which might be able to carry out Your Majesty's wishes."

So you see, Work permit, Mossadegh did not take his fight with Pahlavi public. The words Mosaddeq ... appealed over the heads of the deputies directly to the public is false, pure and simple.

Do you see anything useful here that you would like to add to the article? Feel free. Skywriter (talk) 09:40, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

What you're missing is the fact that BoogaLouie is falsifying sources, attributing his own WP:OR-and-WP:POV-based conclusions to Ervand Abrahamian, the cited source. This is a serious breach of Wikipedia code of conduct and core polices, and what makes it even worse is the fact that he has a history of making false attributions on other articles too. [6] So this is by no means, an isolated incident. --Kurdo777 (talk) 05:06, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

"serious breach of Wikipedia code of conduct and core polices" Sounds pretty serious Kurdo. Why don't you get an admin or an arbitrator or someone to look into this alleged falsification of sources and WP:OR and WP:POV and put a stop to it? I would like nothing better than for you to put up or stop accusing me. --BoogaLouie (talk) 15:26, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Did you also fail to see the quote? Was it becuase you failed to go back a page, to p. 270, perhaps becuase you didn't notice Booga had cited p.270-271, and the link was to page 271? Or did you not bother looking at the quote at all?--Work permit (talk) 01:38, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Work permit, Google books often does not allow going back a page. The previews of copyrighted text are often truncated with no option to see additional text. Though asked repeatedly to verify his assertion, BoogaLouie did not give the complete page numbers of his citation and the link he provided did not allow going back a page. That was the crux of the misunderstanding, together with his leaving out the more detailed history that is readily available in Kinzer's book. When there are credible but differing versions of an event, Wikipedia policy is to include both. That didn't happen here and that is the underlying reason for this dispute. Skywriter (talk) 13:21, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

The source was not falsified so much as it was taken out of context. In the book cited, Abrahamian does not describe what Mossadegh did to appeal to the public. Abrahamian offered a simple summary in his Iran Between Two Revolutions, which has only a short section about the coup in a long book about the culture of Iranian politics. Abrahamian is, however, writing a book specifically about the coup and perhaps there he will more fully describe the context of this incident. In the meantime, the fuller description is in Kinzer's All the Shah's Men, which states very specifically that Mossadegh gave his letter of resignation to Pahlavi and then went home. Kinzer very carefully states that Mossadegh did not go public with his resignation. He goes so far as to say that the Iranian public did not know Mossadegh was no longer prime minister until his successor issued a series of repressive rules which drew widespread opposition. That is when the Iranian public learned of his resignation, Kinzer wrote. Kinzer also writes that Mossadegh did not have to go public. He didn't even leave his home. When the public learned of Pahlavi's dispute with Mossadegh, the public sided with Mossadegh. Pahlavi met widespread public protest by shooting protesters, and when that tactic won him no love, Pahlavi fired Qavam, whom he had appointed, reinstated Mossadegh, who was elected, as prime minister. The role played by the Iranian public in forcing the monarch to reinstate the popular leader is the context that was left out. The failure of an editor to provide complete page numbers for the online Google book quote and then leaving out the context for the assertion led to the dispute in the article and on this page. The editor's stated bias against Mossadegh played a role in causing this dispute. Skywriter (talk) 13:08, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

"appealed over the heads of the deputies"

Here is an even more specific link to that quote in Iran Between Two Revolutions. I went to google books and searched, in quotes, the phrase "appealed over the heads of the deputies directly to the public".
Skywriter, would you please stop this, admit you were wrong, and try not to make reckless accusations in the future! (reposted from above) --BoogaLouie (talk) 17:05, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

BoogaLouie, your remarks are contentious and ill-chosen exactly because the wording you chose leaves out the context of this event, which is easily available in Kinzer's book, which you have quoted. Context counts! Skywriter (talk) 13:29, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

What I observe, sir, is that the link you offered, despite repeated requests for verifiability over the course of a week was inaccurate, and when you were asked to provide the link or say whether you had written those words, you declined to reply directly and forthrightly. A simple yes or no at any time and a link to the exact wording would have ended the discussion at any time. I will also observe that given differing explanations of particular significant events, you chose one critical of Mossadegh and failed to add that a much more detailed explanation exists in a book (Kinzer) that you have quoted many times. You have demonstrated a non-neutral point of view on the subject Mosadegh in your page of anti-Mossadegh quotes. In this instance, Kinzer's account is more credible because it is more detailed, and it is supported by other historians who have written on this subject. Wikipedia policy is to include both explanations when two are divergent.

I would also point out that googlebooks is often problematic due to copyright law. It does not include very page of every book or full pages. When an editor makes an assertion, it must be verifiable. Your assertion was not verifiable based on the information you provided over the period of one week, despite a series of requests to provide that verification. Skywriter (talk) 17:32, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Google books is not our problem. Any URL provided to display text for us in that manner is a convenience; for Wikipedia it would have sufficed for BoogaLouie to say which page on what book, with no link at all. Kinzer's account has more detail, but detail does not always supply greater credibility. Quotes from Abrahamian and Kinzer that place Mosaddegh in a negative light are not anti-Mosaddegh; they are neutral accounts of an historic event. Binksternet (talk) 17:56, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Maybe we don't need text you can read on the internet but I thought it particularly infuriating that even when it was only one click away for all to see Skywriter kept insisting he couldn't find it. --BoogaLouie (talk) 19:07, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

You originally provided a link to page 271. In your reference, you cited pages 270-271. I went back one page from the link, to the bottom of page 270, and saw the quote. Perhaps Skywriter just didn't. Perhaps I should have been more clear "go to the link and go back a page". In any event, Skywriter points out that Mossadegh went home after he resigned and didn't say a word. It seems evident from the book that mossadeghs "appeal" was his resignation. Should that be made more clear? --Work permit (talk) 01:33, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that is historically accurate, Work permit. Skywriter (talk) 13:29, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

1950s section - edits have removed anything about the emergency powers

The article has several paragraphs about the 1952 election, but after all the discussion and attempts to add it (after this), there's still nothing about major events much closer to the time of the coup: Mosaddeq's nomination for War Minister, the riots that followed, the emergency powers he was given and then extended, why there was a referendum disolving parliament, the fact that the referendum had separately placed ballot boxes for yes or no ballots (something no less a fan of Mossadeq than Elwell-Sutton mentions in Persian Oil, A Study in Power Politics) These facts have been deleted in the name of of WP:Undue, WP:COATRACK and WP:Primary WP:consensus. --BoogaLouie (talk) 19:25, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Without removing very much of what has been added in the interim, I restored some of the missing text. It is critical to the understanding of what happened to Mosaddegh's last two years of rule. Binksternet (talk) 20:21, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Last two years? He was prime minister for 28 months. Without placing his request for emergency powers in the context of what US/UK were doing to undermine his government, this lacks credibility and smacks of POV-pushing. Binksternet, your dislike of Mossadegh is coloring your edits and your leaving out what led up to the request for emergency powers is equally biased. Skywriter (talk) 09:34, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Removing the emergency powers information is absolutely detrimental to the understanding of the man. You have no idea what my opinion of Mosaddegh is—all I am looking for is an accurate retelling of the story, with all its relevant details. Taking emergency powers, for whatever reason, is important to the story. Telling the reason is, too. Binksternet (talk) 15:19, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

The usual problems

recent edits by Kurdo.

Wikipedia articles are supposed to have a neutral point of view, WP:NPOV, but these recent edits pad the already over-long article with tangential facts in the serviced of making the coup seem as much like a struggle between good and evil - with no shades of grey - as possible.

• mosaddeq placed under house arrest Edits summary: "... don't temper with sourced statements, he was confined to his country home, that's what al the source say." In fact the source given makes no mention Iran+Between+Two+Revolutions++august+19+zahedi&ei=oCq2S-2ZDpzOMP28sPkO&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false check p.280 here but the Kinzer book says

"For more than a decade Mossadegh never left this compound. He could have, because his sentence confined him only to the village, not strictly to the compound." but police agents "were under orders to follow and observe him if he stepped beyond the gates." "Compound is quite a pleasant place with paths through gardens and arbors." (Kinzer, Stephen, All the Shah's Men : An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, Stephen Kinzer, John Wiley and Sons, 2003 p.219)

In other words, he was confined to the village not a house. Binksternet (talk) 18:27, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Gosh, Binksternet, one does not have to read too far or too long to realize your attempt to place the best possible spin on this coup. Unfortunately, you consistently do that at the expense of context. Same page that you quote (Kinzer, 2003 p.219) "the manor house is comfortable though hardly luxurious." And on p. 220, "Relatives who visited him say that he was depressed, discouraged, and demoralized. He mourned not for the loss of his own power but for the collapse of his dreams for Iran." In his memoir, he wrote, "I am effectively in ail. I am imprisoned in this village, deprived of all personal freedoms, and wishful that my time would be up soon and I would be relieved of this existence." Next time, show good faith and show context. There'd be a lot less stress associated with this article and it would mean using WP:RS in the way the authors intended rather than spun in the way that fits your personal viewpoint.Skywriter (talk) 06:03, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

• sticking a list of nonmilitary Tudeh arrested - "4121 Tudeh political activists including 386 civil servants, 201 collage students, 165 teachers, 125 skilled workers, 80 textile workers, 60 cobblers, 11 housewives" - in front of a list of high level Tudeh agents (Tudeh members (22 colonels, 69 majors, 100 captains, 193 lieutenants, 19 noncommissioned officers, and 63 military cadets) in the army.

• the post-coup crackdown was relatively lenient. Example:

It is surprising that the regime did not demand more of its prisoners - especially since the 1953 coup coincided with the height of McCarthyism in the United States and the Slansky trials in Eastern Europe. The regime in Iran prefered that the public forget the immediate past as soon as possible." (Tortured confessions: prisons and public recantations in modern Iran, p.98) Binksternet (talk) 18:27, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Is that what you learned form those pages, Binksternet? Do you mean it is your personal opinion that "the post-coup crackdown was relatively lenient?" Do you think the people held in jail all those years would support your opinion that it was "relatively lenient"? "relatively lenient" is relative to what? not being in jail for wanting to nationalize the oil industry?

More seriously, why did you leave out the context? "By the late 1960s, the number of Tudeh prisoners had dwindled to less than two dozen. Their nucleus was seven military officers who refused to sign the conventional letters of regret. Remaining incarcerated until the revolution, they became--with Nelson Mandela--the world's longest-serving political prisoners." (Abrahamian, 1999, p. 100) Binksternet, what you offer is not a neutral viewpoint and that is part of, as the heading describes, The usual problems When you represent what an author writes, please present the context, and if gray areas are demonstrated, please show them too. It would go far in building trust in the editing of this article. Skywriter (talk) 06:03, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

After the passage quoted above, Abrahamian continues with "National Front leaders were treated more leniently." Kurdo's inclusion of the National Front in the section about 4000+ Tudeh being rounded up and tortured puts undue emphasis on NF vs Tudeh repression. Binksternet (talk) 18:27, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

The above comment is illogical. If President Reagan and his cabinet had been tried by a military court and imprisoned for four years, it would have been a very big deal. On both counts, the National Front and Tudeh Party members were unconstitutionally held in prison for years after the coup. I see no undue emphasis so long as the report is accurate and in context. Skywriter (talk) 06:03, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Another example by Abrahamian :

"As the shah returned home, the armed forces proceeded to dismantle the National Front as well as the Tudeh. They arested Mossadeq, Razavi, Shayegan, and after a three-month search, Fatemi, who had taken shelter in the Tudeh underground. They also arrested eight high-ranking officers who had supported Mossadeq; the main cabinet ministers, including Abul Qassem Amini; and the leaders of the Iran party, the National Party, and the Third Force. With the exceptions of Fatemi, who was executed, and Lufti, the justice minister, who was murdered, the other National Front leaders recieved lenient treatment - often prison terms no longer than five years. The treatment meted out to the Tudeh, however, was much harsher. As the Tudeh undergound was gradually unearthed in the next four years, the security forces executed forty party officials, tortured to death another fourteen, sentenced some two hundred to life imprisonment, and arrested over 3000 rank-and-file members." (Iran Between Two Revolutions, by Abrahamian, 1982, p.280,

But the article says this:

Mosaddegh's supporters were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured or executed. The minister of Foreign Affairs and the closest associate of Mosaddegh, Hossein Fatemi, was executed by firing squad on Oct. 29, 1953.[15]"

i.e. a grand total of one was executed. And what did he do? Abrahamian says:

"Hossein Fatemi, the foreign minister, was executed after being found guilty of plotting to overthrow the constitutional monarchy.` He had advised Mossadeq to declare a republic. He had taken shelter in the Tudeh underground after the coup. Even more serious, before the coup he had openly denounced the Shah as a `venomous serpent.`" (Abrahamian, Ervand, Tortured Confessions, University of California Press, 1999 p.99)

Kinzer quotes him in speech just before the coup:

`O traitor Shah, you shamelss person, you have completed the criminal history of the Pahlavi regime! The people want revenge. They want to drag you from behind your desk to the gallows.` Kinzer, 2003, p.194

Binksternet (talk) 18:27, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

What exactly is your point, Binksternet? That Fatemi got what he deserved and torturing people is not so bad as it sounds? Skywriter (talk) 06:03, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

• Nothing about Iranian elements that helped the coup: "The easy success of this coup can be explained by two factors: the widening gap between the traditional and middle classes within the National Front; and the increasing alienation of the whole officer corps from the civilian administration." (Abrahamian p.273-4) --BoogaLouie (talk) 19:11, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

What was the context, BoogaLouie? Oh here it is, coming exactly one sentence before the one you quote. "For while winning new victories, Mossadeq was losing old allies. While promising extensive social reforms, he was caught between dwindling oil revenues, increasing unemployment, and escalating consumer prices." Is there a reason you left that out. If you had included it, you would have built trust and good faith for your edits. Instead, with each edit, you choose to take the author out of context and show Mossadeq in the worst possible light. Why is that? Skywriter (talk) 06:19, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, BoogaLouie, but you left out the most politically significant and well-documented opposition to Mossadeq's secular democracy: Ayatallah Kashani and the religious folks who opposed secular democracy, Mossadeq, and the National Front reforms in 1953. They wanted to marry church and state, and that's what that group got and have had ever since, after themselves overthrowing the monarchy in 1979. Same problem. You excerpt a few words here and a few words there and leave out the context. That's a large problem with the editing of this article and a source of the disputes. Skywriter (talk) 06:03, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

He did not call for the shah's death, he proclaimed that the people wanted him dead. Two different things... Binksternet (talk) 22:07, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

British coup, placing Reza Shah in power

As long as the article intends to trace oil back to WWI times, we may as well mention how the British backed Reza Shah in February 1921 and helped him overthrow Ahmad Shah's prime minister, replacing him with Sayyed Zia, and putting Reza Shah in charge of the Cossack Brigade. (Kinzer, Stephen, All the Shah's Men : An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, Stephen Kinzer, John Wiley and Sons, 2003, p. 41

Binksternet (talk) 15:22, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I have a better idea. Trim the oil section since the idea that oil motivated the US to organize a coup is a fringe theory WP:Fringe. --BoogaLouie (talk) 20:57, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

BoogaLouie, this claim is false and was demonstrated to be false last year. Why are you re-arguing the point? Skywriter (talk) 06:38, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Are you prepared to provide appropriate context, Binksternet? Skywriter (talk) 06:38, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Prepared? No. Would I if I had the time and a couple of relevant textbooks? Probably. Binksternet (talk) 13:05, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

1950's section redux

The issue was discussed in details at Talk:1953_Iranian_coup_d'état#Selective_editing and the consensus was that version of the section being pushed by Binksternet and Booga violates several Wikipedia core polices like WP:NPOV, WP:Cherry, and WP:UNDUE. Binksternet, however, has ignored the discussion in question and continues to revert to the disputed version without a WP:Consensus. --Kurdo777 (talk) 16:54, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Wow, there sure are a lot of policy and guideline links, as usual, in your post, but without specificity. Why do you not address the various parts of my additions?

At the linked "discussion in question", there was no consensus arrived at. It degenerated into a demand for a Google books link which was eventually supplied after much shrill accusation. Ugly! I cannot imagine what kind of consensus you think was obtained from that lengthy and bitter interchange.

Instead, what I did following that unproductive sidebar is to add to the article well-sourced material taken from expert texts, texts used by your approval throughout the article, to support other facts present in those same sources. What you are doing is cutting out any of the accurate history which does not show Mosaddegh to be heroic, and what I am doing is trying to set a neutral tone. Which one of us is violating WP:NPOV? When you say that I am cherry picking facts from the acknowledged expert sources places, you are placing yourself above the sources as a more expert observer. I do not accept your assumption of that position—I take the sources at their word and try to summarize their contents for the reader here. Binksternet (talk) 17:48, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

One more thing my additions attempted to fix was the over-reliance on huge quotes. See my unanswered note at Talk:1953 Iranian coup d'état#Huge quotes redux. I trimmed words from Kinzer's huge quote, ones which did not correspond to an encyclopedia's neutral tone. I took out "passionately supported" and "naturally hoped"—these were too colored, too POV. Still to address is the gigantic Kinzer quote which begins "Iranian elections took several weeks to complete..." It overvalues the words of one observer, and has non-neutral or inaccurate phrases such as "enemies' electoral chicanery" and "whose faith in the popular will was boundless". There is more work to do here. Binksternet (talk) 17:59, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

It's OK to cut or accurately summarize long quotes. However, it is not OK to edit reliable sources. It's not OK for WP editors to insert wording such as you describe. It certainly is OK to quote reliable sources saying it. So I think you are confused about who can say what. By unilaterally taking out strong words from generally acknowledged reliable sources, and Kinzer certainly fits that category, then you bring original research to that body of work. So I think there's a fine line here and confusion about what can and can not be added within the bounds of WP guidelines. Skywriter (talk) 01:09, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

What is the difference between summarizing quotes, and breaking them up into pieces with summary text in between, like I did? I did not misrepresent Kinzer as saying the words I wrote. What I did was follow Wikipedia:Quotations#Overusing quotations where it says "Intersperse quotations with original prose that comments on those quotations instead of constructing articles out of quotations with little or no original prose." I also used the next section down (Wikipedia:Quotations#When not to use quotations) where it says "Where a quotation presents rhetorical language in place of more neutral, dispassionate tone preferred for encyclopedias, it can be a backdoor method of inserting a non-neutral treatment of a controversial subject into Wikipedia's narrative on the subject, and should be avoided." I am aiming for a neutral tone, and I am alert for the backdoor insertion of too-passionate text. It is a fine line, but if you think I was in error relative to WP guidelines, what guidelines are those? Binksternet (talk) 01:38, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

What I am doing is preserving WP:NPOV, what you are doing is POV-pushing. Skywriter, The Four Deuces , Babakexorramdin , and myself have all pointed out that your edits are selective, biased, and a clear violation of WP:UNDUE and WP:CHERRY . Just because something can be sourced, it does not mean that it warrants inclusion on any page or any section. --Kurdo777 (talk) 18:48, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Kurdo777, blind reversions are edit warring. I put together the current form of the article not from edit warring but from examining the various sources that we have in front of us. You'll notice that my changes added quite a bit of sourced text. My goal was more in the direction of inclusion than deletion, in order to give the article a neutral tone assembled from contributions of the Mosaddegh-as-hero editors and the Mosaddegh-was-both-good-and-bad editors. You consistently take material out of the article: today, you removed Kinzer's description of Mosaddegh described by his opponents "as undemocratic and grasping for personal power" which I put in there to counterbalance Kinzer saying "he was widely admired as a hero". Both of those statements cannot be true: I replaced the 'hero' quote taken straight from Kinzer with this summary in my words: "he knew many admired him as a hero". What possible problem do you have with that? Both quotes are from Kinzer, a source you have used repeatedly. Binksternet (talk) 19:27, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I have taken the combined neutral version of the article, not Kurdo777's deleted version, to build further on the article. I have changed "under house arrest" in the article to Abrahamian's "banished to his village".(Abrahamian, 1999, p. 75) I have introduced a sentence describing the 1941 founding of the Tudeh Party, as formerly, the party suddenly showed up without explanation.(Abrahamian, 1999, p. 75) I have taken out the unsupported/unsupportable text that said the National Front was singled out "specially" for repression, when Abrahamian says twice that it was the Tudeh bearing the brunt.(Abrahamian, 1999, p.84) I threw in some more references where the text was fine but was not directly connected to its source. I tried to make some sense of Abrahamian's description of torture growing slowly with the reports of tortured people dying in increasing numbers. I think the article is getting better bit by bit. Binksternet (talk) 21:40, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

For the record, you have misinterpreted what Abrahamian (Abrahamian, 1999, p. 75) is referring to when you quote him, as you describe above, Binksternet. A careful reading of that page shows that "banished to his village" refers to Mossadeq's banishment under Reza Shah prior to what Abrahamian calls the Interrregnum, the second period in Iranian history (1941-53) that "Iranians consider their second constitutional era--the first being the period between 1905 and 1921" (Abrahamian, 1999, p. 73). The context of Mossadeq's banishment by Reza Shah was prior to 1941 when Britain and the Soviet Union forced Reza Shah to step down and leave Iran for consorting with the Axis Powers. In 1957, Mossadeq was banished to his home after serving three years in solitary confinement after his sentencing in December 1954 under the rule of Reza Shah's son who replaced his father on the Peacock Throne in 1941 but had little power until the US and Britain overthrew the constitutional government of Mossadeq in 1953. Skywriter (talk) 05:14, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I just restored this material which improved the article by tweaking references and refining page numbers. Kurdo777, please stop making your simple reversions. This is edit warring at its most basic. What I am doing is trying to create a combined version with everybody's input acknowledged. Binksternet (talk) 22:31, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

One question about User:Babakexorramdin: where did that editor say what you said he said? Binksternet (talk) 22:47, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Check Babakexorramdin's edit summery [7], he clearly says "undue weight and thus a biased representation of the whole story". That means four different editors are on the record opposing the questionable changes, which you and Booga are trying to impose on the article, without a WP:Consensus. --Kurdo777 (talk) 20:40, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

As you can see by my discussion with Babakexorramdin at his talk page (User_talk:Kamranmirza#1953_Iranian_coup_d.27.C3.A9tat), I do not agree that his simple knee-jerk reversion was about undue weight or bias. His reversion, like yours, took out a lot of article improvement work and took out reliably sourced material critical to the history's neutral presentation. You are misrepresenting WP:NPOV; a balanced presentation of the facts will show that not everything Mosaddegh did was above reproach. He was admired by many, and wished for the best, but he could not have been deposed without the loss of support (per Abrahamian and Kinzer). The history must describe how he lost support from just enough special interest groups that he was able to be deposed. Binksternet (talk) 21:46, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Weather you agree or not, your opinion has absolutely no weight, you still do not have a WP:consensus to include the disputed section. That's all that matters. --Kurdo777 (talk) 00:51, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

What consensus do you see in the talk page? What specifically would you change?--Work permit (talk) 18:26, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Emergency powers

I attempted to restore the section on Emergency powers deleted by Skywriter and it was deleted less than one minute later by Kurdo with the explanation "Get a WP:consensus for tour edits." Was there any consensus for their deletion? Kurdo do you deny that the Emergency powers given to Mosaddeq in 1952 were an important issue in the history of his administration? If so why? --BoogaLouie (talk) 20:39, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

You know very well why, it's Wikipedia:Coatrack and WP:UNDUE, and disputed by four different editors. Also, the issue is already being discussed in the above section, you don't have to start a new sub-section for every comment you make. --Kurdo777 (talk) 20:46, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

You have not shown at all why the quotes taken from Abrahamian and Kinzer are undue or coatracked. You have only listed wikilinks to those guidelines, without any specificity to the text. Don't forget WP:CHERRY... or are you giving that guideline wikilink a little break today? </sarcasm> Seriously, now, explain why you think nothing about emergency powers should be in the article, when that aspect is important to Ervand Abrahamian, one of the finest scholars? Emergency powers can also be found as "sweeping emergency powers" in Vali Nasr's Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World. Another observer who thinks emergency powers are critical to the storyline is Misagh Parsa who writes "In early January 1953, when Mosaddegh requested an extension of emergency powers in order to resolve the country's crisis, Kashani refused to go along..." The section on emergency powers must be included. Binksternet (talk) 21:05, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

To repeat what I said above, the article has several paragraphs about the 1952 election, but after all the discussion and attempts to add it/them, there's still nothing about major events much closer to the time of the coup: Mosaddeq's nomination for War Minister, the riots that followed, the emergency powers he was given and then extended, why there was a referendum disolving parliament, the fact that the referendum had separately placed ballot boxes for yes or no ballots (something no less a fan of Mossadeq than Elwell-Sutton mentions in Persian Oil, A Study in Power Politics). --BoogaLouie (talk) 21:35, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

It is disruptive to over-emphasize Mossadegh's request for emergency powers without placing it in the context of what the Western Super Powers were doing in Iran to undermine the elected government, which prompted his request. Without this context, the request for emergency powers makes no sense and appears to be just another attempt to make it seem as though Mossadegh was a rotten leader and a dictator, which no scholar of this subject suggests.

I raise this now because Binksternet applies the term "dictator" to Mossadegh in his request for arbitration. The scholars who have written extensively about this coup do not share Binksternet's viewpoint. Mossadegh's biographer has a different view too.[8]

I do not object to the emergency powers being discussed. I do object to leaving out the context.

At[9]Binksternet makes the claim that "and Mosaddegh seizing emergency powers, resulting in accusations from Abol-Ghasem Kashani, Iran's Parliament Speaker, of dictator-type behavior from Mosaddegh." Here Binksternet selectively leaves out that Kashani broke with Mossadegh primarily because the prime minister instituted secular reforms while Kashani wanted strict Sharia law enforced, such as repressively exists in the Islamic Republic of Iran today. Binkersternet also leaves out that CIA officer Wilber reported that Kashani was on his payroll.

I will comment no further on BoogaLouie's bias which is heavily documented by uninvolved editors on that arbitration page.[10] [11] Skywriter (talk) 08:43, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

You are not seeing the obvious solution: having both a statement of Mosaddegh's seizing of emergency powers and the reasons that he took this extraordinary move. If you add emergency powers and the reasons to the article, it will be a good indicator that you are willing back your argument up with action. Binksternet (talk) 15:27, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

You are missing the obvious. Do not add content that is not placed in context and that does not reflect what reliable sources have written. It is not the job of other editors to clean messes. Binksternet, your biased view of Mossadegh's request for emergency powers occurred within a context and it was entirely legal. Your attempts to make it a shameful action distorts the history and demonstrates your extreme bias, a view that no scholar of this coup shares. Skywriter (talk) 05:39, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

"Entirely legal" and "notable" are two different things. I think it is perfectly notable to discuss Mosaddegh's seizure of emergency powers, since many of the most reliable sources also discuss this situation. In August 2009, when Jacob Lundberg added the bit about emergency powers and rigged elections, why was it immediately removed by Wayiran, for the stated purpose of "POV-pushing using fringe sources, also undo weight"? This information is not undue, it is not fringe, it is not POV. It is actually the writing of a fine reliable source. Binksternet (talk) 05:21, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

What has transpired over the last year in this article

Binksternet has asked for arbitration and those who are interested in this article can participate. Binksternet wrote that I did not show up for his last request for outside help and that was thrown out as a result. I did try to do what I was asked but apparently responded on the wrong page. I have tried to participate in the current arbitration but my contribution was cut by 80 percent. As it contains factual material relevant to the issues associated with this article and arbitrators are primarily looking for behavioral issues, I think the factual material belongs on this talk page and so I am placing it here as follows. (I grant that it is long and I apologize for that though I believe this is relevant to make progress. I believe this is an accurate assessment of the history of this article.

This is not about liberal or conservative battle. It is about using tangential vs. focused sources. The following is a summary of what has transpired on the 1953 coup in Iran page for more than a year. I regret not having the time to shorten this. I have worked in the weeds of this article and its talk page for several years.

On the 1953 coup page, at least one editor spent last spring and summer arguing that oil was a minor to minuscule part of the coup, and that the coup was justified in that it was an effort by the US and UK to save the world from communism. That editor won over several editors, who had dropped in, to that position. That view did not reflect scholarly history of the coup.

The historians, who are [WP:RS]] for this article, have found, in summary, that:

• the then Soviet Union showed no interest in moving into Iran during the years 1950-53. The UK and USSR did occupy Iran during WWII due to the then monarch's friendliness with the Axis powers. The USSR was pushed out and Britain stayed in order to continue to control and extract the largest share of profits from the world's largest oil refinery on the Iranian island of Abadan.
• the UK was up front with its wish to continue the concession it had held since the beginning of the century, a contract that was revised in 1933. The UK was also up front with its desire for the US to enter the fray in defense of the UK continuing to control the oil concession in Iran.
• the Truman administration rejected that overture and warned the UK not to invade Iran even after the UK set up an economic and military blockade of Iran after Iran nationalized its oil industry in 1951.
• Iran nationalized its oil industry in 1951 with vast popular support by Iranians who were motivated by the undisputed fact that Iranians were paid the lowest wages in the oil world at the British refinery at Abadan and the working conditions for Iranians were also substandard and conditions in Iran were mainly Third World poverty without any major benefit from its most valuable resource; oil industrialists in the U.S. and other western powers had negotiated a 50/50 split with countries like Venezuela and Arabia, which was a better deal than Britain wanted in Iran. These facts made Iranians livid. Opposition to Britain inside Iran was broad, deep and widespread.
• the UK realized its arguments to gain US support would win only with a new administration and only when it began focusing, not on Iran's oil but on warning the new Eisenhower/John Foster Dulles government that Iran would likely fall to communism without a coup. Though historians have examined this argument and found it lacking in that it shielded both countries' oil motives, historians also found that after the coup, the US took half of what had been the UK's oil concession before nationalization, and that the UK would have been better off if it had accepted Iran's offer to split Iranian oil 50/50. The British government controlled 51 percent of the oil company that exploited Iranian oil and that income was the British government's single largest asset and income source.
• communism was not central to the history of the coup though fear of it trumped up by the famously anti-communist Dulles brothers in the U.S. was. The Dulles brothers' Wall Street law firm represented the UK oil company interests and was the nexus of the oil and anti-communism mixture that achieved power when one of the Dulles brothers became secretary of state under Eisenhower and the other became CIA director. Fear of communism was a smokescreen used by western powers to justify the coup. While the communist Tudeh Party was a factor in Iranian politics, there were many other factors as well, with religious politicians being the most important.
• Mossadegh was hamstrung by the Iranian national obsession with kicking the Brits out of Iran. His predecessor was assassinated when he tried to negotiate with Britain. The Iranians were obsessed with their hatred of Britain and its interference with Iran's internal politics and control of its most valuable natural resource. At Britain's request, the US CIA toppled the democratically elected Mossadegh government and installed and protected an oppressive regime that itself was toppled 25 years later.
• Mossadegh continues as an icon of resistance to western imperialism in the Middle East.

The edits by at least one editor continue to reflect an exaggerated anti-communist bias based on the false claim that Iran was in danger of falling to communism. After a year of other editors providing proof after proof after proof of what reliable sources have written about the fact that the UK wanted to retain its half-century long control over Iran's oil, at least one editor finally stopped arguing that the struggle for Iran's oil was not part of the equation.

Instead he began compiling the anti-Mossadegh page to try to show that the US did the right thing in deposing Mossadegh because Mossadegh was somehow a bad leader. At least one editor picked every single negative thing he could find about Mossadegh and without benefit of context, or even one positive statement about Mossadegh, put it all one page and encouraged other editors to choose from those one-sided quotes to show that Mossadegh was a bad actor who the Iranians did not admire. That editor's POV is essentially that the US did the Iranians a favor by deposing its very first democratically elected leader, and he has won other editors to that position not because that is what reliable sources say but because he has all the time in the world to press that viewpoint.

While it can be argued that Mossadegh might have tried to change the minds of the Iranian people about negotiating its oil concession with western powers because that was the only practical position Iran could adopt at that time given the economic embargo and military blockade, it is speculative to suggest that he might have succeeded. Despite the effort by certain editors to try to make the claim that Mossadegh was a "dictator"-- a point of view that no WP:RS supports, Mossadegh was a wily politician who did what a politician inn Iran needed to do to continue in power for a fleeting 28 months. For every moment of the time he was in office, the UK and then the US were plotting and arranging his downfall. The Dulles brothers convinced Eisenhower to approve coup-planning within two weeks of Ike's election to succeed Truman.

The problem with, first, the anti-communist and then, the anti-Mossadegh viewpoint is that it directly contradicts what every major historian has written. That Mossadegh was a drama queen, there is no question. Mossadegh was also the dominant figure in the early 1950s in Iran and throughout the Middle East, and he did represent the national will and Middle Eastern aspirations to drive out westerners. He is fondly remembered throughout the Middle East as the nationalist leader who stood up to the oil grab by westerners. The US/UK won temporarily for the next quarter of a century by propping up the monarchy but that western-supported regime was so intolerably repressive, it was thrown out in 1979, and a reactive and repressive Islamic republic installed in its place.

This article is important because the events did set the stage for the reaction and for much of what has transpired in the last half century. Wikipedia editors have an obligation not to insert their personal viewpoints into articles, and to stick with the facts scholars present and especially not to take sentences out of context. For more than a year, two editors have consistently pushed their personal viewpoints, first anti-communist, now anti-Mossadegh, to the detriment of the article and of Wikipedia. They need to get their personal views out of it and faithfully reflect the spirit and facts of what historians have written. At least one of them ought to stop coloring his views of Muslims, Iranians, and the Middle East through a hostile lens.

The anti-Mossadegh page is recent; And there was not one editor who defended that page as either fair or unbiased; the editor who compiled it did not deny it was biased. That discussion is recorded here on this talk page.

I take issue with Binksternet's claims[12] as, for the most part, they do not reflect the universe of knowledge on what is generally accepted as true among historians and political scientists concerning the 1953 coup. Binksternet's claims are not factual. For example, in trying to make the case that the scholar George Lenczowski is relevant to the 1953 coup in Iraq, Binksternet alleges that Kinzer cites Lenczowski. Well yes, Kinzer does source Lenczowski exactly once in the text and once in the extensive bibliography, not on a point relevant to the coup but to reference a fact about the monarch whose regime ended in 1941. The Kinzer reference to Lenczowski concerns the last shah's father and not the shah/monarch who was propped up after the coup.[13] Similarly, Binksternet alleges that Abrahamian cites Lenczowski and for that reason Binksternet argues that Lenczowski should be central to the article. But Abrahamian footnotes Lenczowski only once and not on the subject of the coup but on an unrelated matter that occurred in 1945, eight years before the coup.[14] Lenczowski was not a scholar of the coup and didn't write much about it. I continue not to understand Binksternet's extensive and distracting attempts[[15]] to elevate Lenczowski to the rank of a central reliable source for this article.

Ervand Abrahamian devotes 13 pages of a 551-page book, written in 1982, to Mossadeq as prime minister pp 267-80. Those pages solely address the politics of social conflict in 20th century Iran until the fall of the shah in 1979 and do not reference Iran's struggle with western powers. Abrahamian offers a limited account of the coup in his book Iran Between Two Revolutions, which is extensively quoted in the article, perhaps too much so because Abrahamian has not written a book about the coup though one is in progress, as is stated on his faculty page. [16] Therefore, I would argue that Abrahamian's views on the coup are of limited use until his book on the coup is released. His views on the internal politics of Iran are of some interest.

• Binksternet's role is unfocused and often biased. For much of the last year, Binksternet edited and conducted himself on the talk page in lockstep with Boogalouie, who often answered questions directed to Binksternet. But Binksternet did distance himself from Booga after the extreme bias in Booga's anti-Mossadegh page was observed for not having one positive thing to say about the widely popular prime minister deposed by the CIA.

• Binksternet regularly uses the talk page to distract [17] from the subject matter.

• Binksternet skirts facts presented by historians/reliable sources who have written full book histories of the 1953 coup in Iran in favor of unrelated material. For example, he substitutes his own judgment of the relative import of his criticisms of Mossadegh, despite that [[WP:RS] historians do not share his views. Worse, he takes their statements out of context to assert his personal views.

So, who are --and who should be-- the central sources for this article?

Scholars who have written books specifically about this subject should be the central sources They have done the most work, given the most thought to, and are therefore the most reliable sources. I have added them all to the article Bibliography and have annotated some and plan to continue to annotate each resource as time allows.

Finally, it is difficult to add content by scholars who wrote entire books about the article subject due to the insistence on the use of a parade of obscure and arcane writers.[18] At one point, however, there was a glimmer of hope. After arguing for more than a year that one of this parade of obscure resources, (O'Reilly, author of a prohibitively expensive and remotely available junior high school textbook) should be in the article lead, Binksternet and comrades finally conceded, by not reverting an edit, that the junior high text and a tourism guide (!) are inappropriate. It took too long and too many arguments for this silliness to recede.

The cure for all of this is to rely on reliable sources-- the scholars who have written books about the article topic.

Instead of focusing on minors who might have off-the-cuff opinions but who have done no real research in the form of substantive books about the 1953 coup, the article editors need to explore the works of historians who have. The most reliable secondary sources who have written the most on-topic books are: Stephen Dorril, Mostafa Elm, L.P. Sutton, all three books by Gasiorowski, Mary Ann Heiss, and two books by Kinzer. Next in historical importance is Manuchihr Farmanfarmaiyan. The full references for all of these I have placed in the Book section.

This Wikipedia article will not improve until the editors focus on the work of scholars who have written extensively about the coup rather than those who have written about it tangentially. The article will also not improve until a few editors stop searching for obscure sources to press viewpoints unsupported by scholars who have written extensively on the coup. Skywriter (talk) 18:21, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

To demonstrate just how relentlessly prejudiced Binksternet's claims are even to the extent of the entire first paragraph in his request for arbitration (above), I refer you to the article by a professor at Sam Houston State in Texas. This article, published in MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. XI, NO. 4, WINTER 2004 is both a review of and summary of Kinzer's book. Titled, "Review Essay of Stephen Kinzer's All the Shah's Men" By Masoud Kazemzadeh, Ph.D. [19]

Kazemzadeh's summary demolishes the basis of Binksternet claims for arbitration. It has never been more clear how much Binksternet picks and chooses among swaths of information to push his own narrow viewpoint, even to the extent of promoting the interests of the most powerful, intolerant and politicized of the Iranian clergy (Kashani) in his effort to destroy Mossadegh's legacy. Binkersternet ignores the dominant view portrayed in the history written by Kinzer. Binksternet instead slices and dices what Kinzer says to select only those bits and scraps of data that promote Binksternet's currently anti-Mossadegh viewpoint. This is what makes editing this article so difficult. Last year, Binksternet and friends were promoting the "commies made me do it" theory of the coup; now it is the "Mossadegh was an anti-democratic dictator who manipulated elections and caused the coup" theory.

Unfortunately for Binksternet and friends, Professor Kazemzadeh has summarized the main themes in Kinzer's book. That summary demonstrates how wet Binksternet and friends are in their deeply prejudiced analysis of this coup. If pointing to this quick summary by a RS helps to stop Binksternet et al. from biased editing, my effort in demonstrating bias will not be for naught. It is evident that Binksternet and friends have a tremendous amount of time to cook up theories and are tireless in their efforts to distort Wikipedia values and policies.

One of the editors here attacked the historian/professor L.P. Sutton as being pro-Mossadegh. Sutton, a Scot, wrote the first reliable history of the coup and his work is cited in all of the major histories of the coup that have been written since. Wikipedia editors are not supposed to substitute their own judgment for that of scholars. To do so, demonstrates bias.

Skywriter (talk) 19:21, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

You write that I am unfocused here and often biased. You write that I have acted in lockstep with BoogaLouie but distanced myself from him after he was seen to be extremely biased. You write that I use the talk page to distract editors. You write that I push my narrow viewpoint by picking and choosing information in my "effort to destroy Mossadegh's legacy". I say this: You have no idea who I am and you do not understand my purpose here. I am here to help make the article reflect the sources. It is you who picks and chooses Kinzer's words to get the result that Mosaddegh's legacy is one of an untarnished hero. Kinzer writes some unflattering things about Mosaddegh, and you delete them. Are you a better judge than Kinzer? I make certain that Kashani's words are represented because he was a powerful politician who was listened to, not because I think him admirable in any way. You cannot shut Kashani away because he was intolerant—he was the Speaker of the Parliament, the top legislator. Many Iranians paid attention to him at the time. I am not at all anti-Mosaddegh; what I am is pro-truth. What I take from your deletion of various parts of Kinzer's account is that you are pro-Mosaddegh, and that this non-neutral point of view is poisonous to truth. Binksternet (talk) 01:07, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I know the role you play here, sir, having observed your actions for nearly one year. Kashani did play a part in this history and should be mentioned in context. It is all about context and that underlies much of the disputes. What is the context that you would include Kashani? Thanks. Skywriter (talk) 01:29, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Binksternet's request for arbitration has been rejected.1953 Iranian coup POV: Case rejected - 10 days without meeting acceptance criteria) Skywriter (talk) 19:27, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

democratically elected?

Due to the enormously controversial nature of the Iranian/Western relationship, it is perhaps a little bit deceptive to refer to Mossadegh as the "democratically elected" prime minister without also pointing out the the previous "democratically elected" prime minister had just recently been assassinated. A cursory reading of the article could leave the reader with the impression that Mossadegh had been elected by a some kind of ground-breaking general plebiscite, which was not the case, as he had been elected by a majority parliamentary vote, as had likewise the late (pro-Western) prime minister Ali Razmara. After the parliamentary vote, Mossadegh's position had to be ratified by the Shah, and subsequently had to be again - after Mossadegh's deposal and reinstatement. Pontificateus (talk) 02:16, 16 June 2010 (UTC).

You've had no response for two months, as there are POV-pushing editors here who will not tolerate having anything in the article but the story of a pure and saintly Mosaddegh who was martyred to British and American greed for oil. In their version, the democratic nature of the election must be emphasized over and over, like voices getting louder in argument after reason has quit the scene. For instance, in this version of the article, the phrase "democratically elected" appears five times in the article body, and twice in references. In my version, it appears three times in the article and once in the references. Truly, your observation that the election results should be compared to previous ones is apt. And your comment about the tone of the article giving an incorrect impression is dead on. Too much emphasis on "democratically elected", too little discussion of the context.

To Kurdo777: I am not edit warring over the words "democratically elected". Edit warring is simple reversion with no discussion. I am discussing why it is that the words are too much emphasized when the facts are questionable and the tone is overstated. When I looked at the article on August 17 I found seven instances of "democratically elected" and I removed one which was in very close proximity to another. Two days later, User:Wayiran reverted me without discussion and without an edit summary. That is what edit warring is, Kurdo. My next two edits sifted through the article with a finer comb, looking for a better way to represent the phrase "democratically elected". I found three instances of it in the first paragraph which are two too many, so I removed two of them. I also found that Barack Obama was quoted on the same subject twice, from the same keynote address made at one Cairo appearance. I see no reason why we need to have redundant information, so I removed one of the Obama quotes and kept the longer, more inclusive one that had more context. Clearly this is improvement of the article—a simple copyediting of the work to make sure it flows correctly and does not repeat itself overmuch. I did not attempt to address Pontificateus's concerns as expressed above, as I did not have the proper references at hand.

On my talk page you say "there is nothing redundant about using democratically-elected as an adjective in one sentence and then mentioning that it was the first democratically-elected government in the next sentence." I disagree, based on the English composition lessons I learned at 12 and 13 years of age. Good writing avoids unnecessary repetition. However, repetition can be used to good effect to establish a rhythm or make a point, but an artful rhythm is not the primary goal of a contentious summary-style encyclopedia article about Iran's history. It appears from your pushing for so many instances of the phrase "democratically elected" that you wish to make a point, but that point is a flawed one. There are expert observers who do not consider Mosaddegh to be the first democratically elected prime minister, and there are expert observers who do not think his election was a fair gauge of public opinion, that it was rigged. The repetition seems to me to be a crude attempt to shout down reliably sourced interpretations that are at variance to your idea of how the government was formed. Binksternet (talk) 17:17, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

After seeing no response, I am returning the article to its non-redundant version, with fewer instances of "democratically elected". Three instances appear in the article, and one in the references. This is quite enough to satisfy those who believe the elections were legitimate. It's not like I am trying to get rid of all of them, to erase the mention. Binksternet (talk) 04:13, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so I see that Kurdo777 has responded twice on my talk page rather than here. This is what has been said on my talk page:

Once again, you're edit-warring against or without a consensus. We have gone over this issue before. There is nothing redundant about using democratically-elected as an adjective in one sentence and then mentioning that it was the first democratically-elected government in the next sentence. Kurdo777 (talk) 11:55, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it is totally redundant to say it so many times, and twice so quickly in the lead paragraph. It is bad writing, and it is POV-pushing to try and emphasize that aspect. All that needs to be said is that it was the first democratically elected government of Iran, then the subsequent quotes can fill in the next few instances of "democratically elected". Binksternet (talk) 15:24, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

No , it is not. What is POV-pushing is your petty attempt at undermining the fact (supported by hundreds of sources) that the government in question was democratically-elected. Kurdo777 (talk) 04:22, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

My answer is that a simple nay-saying negation is not an argument. How can you complain that the article does not fairly represent the "democratically elected" position when it states it FOUR times? Binksternet (talk) 04:28, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

One further observation is that I do not need a consensus to edit the article. The article cries out for improvement, with its prominent tag saying that it has multiple issues, which it has. Are you saying that the article should continue in its flawed state? Binksternet (talk) 04:31, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

The issue of "democratically-elected" has been discussed many times before, the overwhelming majority of the sources refer to the government in question as democratically-elected. You opinions, synthesis of sources to prove a point that the goverment was not democratic etc, or attempts to undermine this crucial fact by calling it "repetitive" etc, have no merits, and go against scholarly consensus, and the previous consensus of the editors here. Kurdo777 (talk) 04:46, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

You forget that four instances of "democratically elected" remain in the article in my version. Do you think I am wiping it out, as perhaps Pontificateus might argue? You think I am undermining it? No, not me, not this time; I do not have the references about me to attempt that. What I have is good English sense, good writing sense. Your arguments do not cover that aspect at all, and your reversion has no merit. The only thing I am trying to do is prevent the article from pathetically flogging the issue, boorishly and loudly, as if there were no firm basis for it and sheer volume must replace cool logic. I am looking forward to your explanation of this reversion of yours which once again sets a wholly redundant paragraph containing Barack Obama's Cairo speech into the article to mirror, weakly, the existing section in which Barack Obama speaks in Cairo, saying the same exact thing in greater detail. Binksternet (talk) 07:45, 23 August 2010 (UTC)