Talk:Iraqi invasion of Iran
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Contested deletion
[edit]This page should not be speedy deleted as an unambiguous copyright infringement, because... (your reason here) --Seyyed(t-c) 20:52, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
- OK. There is a too long template on the Iran-Iraq war. Thus I want to shorten it by making a new article. Please, let me to improve the new article. --Seyyed(t-c) 20:52, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
- It's fine to split long articles into shorter ones like this, but please make sure you follow WP:CWW when copying content from one article to another. I've taken care of this one for you. Hut 8.5 17:50, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
Orphaned references in Iraq Invasion of Iran (1980)
[edit]I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Iraq Invasion of Iran (1980)'s orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.
Reference named "Farrokh 03":
- From Battle of Mehran: Farrokh, Kaveh. Iran at War: 1500-1988.
- From Tawakalna ala Allah Operations: Farrokh, Kaveh. Iran at War: 1500-1988. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 9781780962214.
- From Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran: Farrokh, Kaveh. Iran at War: 1500-1988.
- From Operation Mersad: Farrokh, Kaveh. Iran at War: 1500–1988. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78096-221-4.
I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 21:59, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
External links modified
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Requested move 14 January 2020
[edit]- The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The result of the move request was: Moved — Amakuru (talk) 22:07, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
Iraqi invasion of Iran (1980) → Iraqi invasion of Iran – Already redirects there. Unreal7 (talk) 21:41, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
- Oppose "Already redirects here" is no reason. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:20, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
- Yes it is. It's unnecessary dab. Unreal7 (talk) 10:56, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
- Support - unnecessary disambiguation.--Staberinde (talk) 21:31, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
User-generated content sites/blogs are not a reliable source. Stop claiming that it is.
[edit]To start off a series to address a number of issues plaguing this article (and related ones) including multiple instances of failed verification, original research, unsubstantiated claims, a clear disregard for NPOV, the first is the use of a user-generated content blog-style site as a source. http://www.iranchamber.com/history/iran_iraq_war/iran_iraq_war1.php . It's about page even admits to being as such http://www.iranchamber.com/about_us/about_us.php
Using this website as a source is a textbook definition of what is not WP:RS, and instead is WP:UGC. Defending such a source would be in direct contradiction to WP:RS, and further push the lack of evident NPOV and seeming WP:ADVOCACY expressed on this and other pages.
The defense provided thus far is hopelessly erroneous, that because such a source has been long-standing, it should be valid. Rather, all that means is this page does not get much traffic and/or no one has taken the time to look into sources, and that particular users watch the page to engage in reverts to continue including such a source.
Further, neither this "source" nor the short German-language Damals article speak on using the Islamic Revolution as pretext to invade, and the Damals article does not really comment on seeing an opportunity to attack due to the state of Iran's army and the Islamic revolution as a pretext. Simply failed verification regarding the Damals article. It's odd why it is included, especially since the Wiki article content preceding it is drawn from the Chamber Society blog. Also, an article in a small popular-science magazine is questionable and unreliable as a source at best, not including that popsci's value is geared towards the entertainment aspect rather than academic to start with.
Proposed Resolution: Textbook example of non-RS, POV, failed verification. Such sources simply do not belong on Wikipedia and should be removed. The Iranian UGC website's evident bias is expected, though that's another matter.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Saucysalsa30 (talk • contribs) 09:59, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
- As expected, there's no objection to the clearly defined WP:RS policy regarding using user-generated blogs as sources. The smalltime popsci magazine is marginally better, but failed verification anyways. They both severely degrade the quality of the article. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 06:44, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
Original research citing Karsh, and conjecture with citation to Farrokh
[edit]Karsh makes it clear that Iraq was not planning to take over and annex the Khuzestan province and how Iraq had limited objective and how that actually turned out to be disastrous for them. How the article cites Karsh as it being a plan to annex Khuzestan is clear original research and POV. Recall that Iraq ceded part of the Shatt al-Arab in the 1975 Algiers Agreement, which previously all belonged to Iraq, to Iran's Khuzestan province. To this point, Karsh writes, "Nor did Saddam's territorial aims go beyond the Shatt al-Arab and a small portion of the southern region of Khuzestan". Around this, Karsh goes into detail on the limited nature of Iraq's objectives, and how it turned out to backfire by not going further. How aiming for a small sliver of territory ceded in a treaty that on 14 Sept 1980 Iran abrogated (which Karsh and other writers and journalists note and oddly missing from this article; again more NPOV) gets transformed into "annexing Khuzestan" (the whole province) is an original research stretch on the part of a past editor.
Proposed Resolution: Karsh's point must be more clearly explained, without any such original research.
This first half line in the Wiki article is simply conjecture: "Saddam's primary interest in war may have stemmed from his desire to right the supposed "wrong" of the Algiers Agreement, in addition to finally achieving his desire of annexing Khuzestan and becoming the regional superpower."
So the Wiki editor is simply assuming it may have been a primary interest. Why is an editor's personal assumptions allowable content?
Farrokh says nothing about becoming a regional superpower or similar verbiage (in fact, it refers to the Shah's Iran as a "mini-superpower"). Speaking of conjecture, regarding Khuzistan, Farrokh himself writes in terms of "would-haves", e.g. "Annexing Khuzistan would greatly expand Iraq’s coastline". In a book full of citations, there's also no citation here. The only citation regarding matters between Iraq and Khuzistan is on a sentence about Iranian allegations: "Some Iranian sources claim that the US encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade Iran and annex Khuzistan".
So we have conjecture and a passing mention "some Iranian sources" to support a Wikipedia article sentence that itself delves into conjecture, whereas we get much more from Karsh, Razoux, etc.
Proposed Resolution: Wiki articles should have not have editor's conjecture (original research) and better sources with more discussion on this matter exist such as Karsh as previously discussed, Razoux, etc. These should be used instead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Saucysalsa30 (talk • contribs) 21:28, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
A 4-sentence angry personal opinion blog post is not RS, plus failed verification
[edit]The fact such a thing, and titled "Let's deport the Iran Embassy siege survivor to Iraq", is used as a source to claim Iraq was behind the London Iranian embassy attack is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. The other source, the SAS book, points to page 7, yet no mention of Iraq is found except to say that the SAS has been involved in Iraq. Simply a case of failed verification.
To address another point made not relevant to this article, one of the users engaged in edit warring falsely claimed that the Iranian_Embassy_siege page links an article that directly implicates Iraq. In reality, all the BBC article says is a vague: "there were allegations that it was backed by Iran's regional rival, Iraq", and nothing more. Who were the allegations by? What were they specifically regarding? Was the backing that the terrorists simply happen to pay off some customs office to get passports? As an analogy, there have also been countless allegations worldwide with substantial "evidence" that 9/11 was committed by the US, Saudi, and/or Israeli governments. Allegations without basis don't go very far. Also, this user was using Wikipedia as a source as the reasoning for that revert.
Proposed Resolution: This sort of activity really diminishes the seriousness, RS, and NPOV of the article and doesn't belong here. Not sure if this content and the blog post were originally added as a joke. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 21:54, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
- The SAS book by Fremont-Barnes failed verification, and additionally cited incorrectly on the Wiki article with the wrong page. Here is what the book has to say about foreign connections/support:
The seizure of the embassy in London led to Iran's immediate condemnation of the act as a conspiracy involving Iraq, the CIA and MI6. Such a sweeping and unsubstantiated claim succeeded in further alienating the Islamic Republic in the eyes of the West, and thus played into the hands of the Khuzestani separatist cause.
- Not very convincing as confirmed, but the controversial claim may remain on the Wiki article for now.
- As for the several sentence angry blog post, it's surprising anyone thought that would make for a good source. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 06:59, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
Original research and failed verification on obscure, defunct Tehran-based website and on BBC article in "Prelude"
[edit]The first source https://web.archive.org/web/20140427083811/http://en.merc.ir/default.aspx?tabid=98&ArticleId=272 says nothing about 70,000 people being expelled. This is failed verification. The claim about increasing tensions is from Hashemi Rafsanjani, the 4th president of Iran, in an evident propaganda statement that would be expected from any leader of a nation.
Also, the site itself belonged to a small, defunct Tehran-based think tank, and the article was a republishing of interviews with several Iranian regime members from other local sources. Rather contrary to the spirit of RS.
The second source from BBC doesn't back up the content. It says nothing about people having little to no ties to Iran. It is also in contradiction to Rafsanjani's statement regarding "forcing the Iraqis of Iranian descent to leave that country and settle in Iran". This seems like a WP:SYNTH gone wrong. The source also has numerous inaccuracies contrary to mainstream research, such as claiming there to be 650,000 Christians in Iraq (article is from Feb 2003) when the verifiable consensus was 1.5 million.
Proposed Resolution: Violations of RS, NPOV, SYNTH, original research, and failed verification. Ideally, this should be fixed up, but the numerous issues with these two sources and the particular Wiki article content they are placed on are such that it is not really recoverable. With enough time without such a resolution, the path would be to remove it to improve the RS, NPOV, and general quality of this article.
The substantial POV, non-RS, original research, failed verification, etc. endemic in this and related Wiki articles, and the fragile but persistent defense of such violations, has produced a series of one-sided and half-true narratives that, coincidentally or not, unsurprisingly are in defense of an existing regime that is famous for its active media platform disinformation operations and do little to mask WP:ADVOCACY. That these articles have been carefully curated for years by the same handful of particular users including in the last day is not a positive image, either. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 23:35, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
A questionable source with exceptional claims not backed up or discussed in any detail, just passing mention, and directly contradicting its "Further Reading" reference
[edit]"World Conflicts: A Comprehensive Guide to World Strife Since 1945" is intriguing for a number of reasons.
First, this statement in the Wiki article is original research. From the Wiki article: "In addition, Khuzestan's large ethnic Arab population would allow Saddam to pose as a liberator for Arabs from Persian rule." It isn't in the source. The source just mentions that it was an "Arabic-speaking province to the east of Mesopotamia". This already makes it suspicious as to why this source is used when it fails verification on this so readily.
Secondly, the citation in the Wiki article is wrong as the 1989 first edition was published by Vintage under the title "The Fighting Never Stopped". The choice of publisher is interesting as Vintage is known for publishing literary classics (Hemingway for example) and nothing to indicate their editorial review process. Vintage is a subsidiary of Penguin, so it's possible Brogan may have been passed up by Penguin before publishing the original edition. Subsequent editions are published by Scarecrow, which is a small-time publisher and subsidiary of Rowman & Littlefield. In terms of the "reputation" perspective of reliable sourcing, it's iffy at best.
Thirdly, Brogan makes some exceptional and unverifiable claims. While he mentions the well-established Iraqi goal reclaiming the Shatt, he also claims Iraq had the goal of overthrowing Khomeini and annexing Khuzestan. No other discussion or coverage is made on this other than the following: "Iraq was the only Arab power capable of defeating Iran and protecting the Sunni regimes in the Gulf from revolutionary Shiite fundamentalism, and the emir of Kuwait and the king of Saudi Arabia pledged their support of Saddam's ambitions. He had hoped not merely to overthrow Khomeini and recover the whole Shatt, but to annex Khuzestan, Iran's Arabic-speaking province to the east of Mesopotamia, where a large part of Iran's oil reserves are to be found." A number of issues exist in this statement: - It is true and verifiable that Kuwait and Saudi Arabia supported Iraq during the war, but the claim of a conspiracy and agreement between the 3 nations before the war to support Iraq and attack Iran is novel. - The presumption Iraq fought in part to protect Sunni regimes in the Gulf is also strange. It may have been a consequence of the war, but was not an Iraqi objective. - The claims of Iraqi objectives to overthrow Khomeini and annex the whole of Khuzestan are equally a product of presumption and poor research. Undue weight and WP:REDFLAG certainly come to mind here. It's also the only reference to Khuzestan in the book.
Fourthly, the book has no inline citations, but has a "Further Reading" section at the end of each chapter. The pre-war Saudi-Kuwaiti-Iraqi conspiracy and overthrowing Khomeini are absent. Curious as where the "annexation" claim derived from, I could find it just in Kanan Makiya's (pseudonym Samir Al-Khalil) "Republic of Fear", which makes only passing mention and which itself claims to being unreliable, admitting to contain "stories and rumours" with "no firmer basis in fact". Strangely, the only reference in the "Further Reading" section focused on the Iran-Iraq War, Majid Khadduri's "The Gulf War: The Origins and Implications of the Iraq-Iran Conflict" contradicts such claims of annexation and overthrowing Khomeini by unspecified and unknown means.
Fifthly, other WP:RS criteria has issues. For example, context matters: "Information provided in passing by an otherwise reliable source that is not related to the principal topics of the publication may not be reliable; editors should cite sources focused on the topic at hand where possible." This book is a catch-all of conflicts since 1945. Out of ~700 pages, it dedicates only 4.5 to the Iran-Iraq War. The part about annexing Khuzestan is a passing mention embedded within other exceptional claims not really supported in academia on the topic. As mentioned, it is bizarre that the only "Further Reading" reference focused on the Iran-Iraq War contradicts Brogan's claim. Further, age matters too according to WP:RS. This book is from 1989. There has been lots of newer scholarship additionally focused on the war such as Karsh, Razoux, etc. and are not obscure works such as Brogan's.
As a final note, it may be displeasing to the POV narrative of particular users here that Brogan refers to the war as an Iraqi victory and spends almost 2 pages on that topic alone.
Proposed Resolution: WP:RS issues, mis-citation, NPOV/Undue weight, WP:REDFLAG, original research, trivial mention, and other potential issues, especially in light of better sources available, make this a strange choice to use for a source. Either it should be kept as an aside of an alternative view, or more likely removed as considerably more reliable and topic-focused sources exist that go into more detail than a trivial mention. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Saucysalsa30 (talk • contribs) 02:32, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
- The above series of rants by Saucysalsa30 should be taken with a grain of salt. They are tendentious walls of text intended to obscure the issues and confuse readers rather than to illuminate the issues in a serious way. As just one example, Saucysalsa30 dismisses Makiya's Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq (University of California Press, 1998) by stating that it
"itself claims to being unreliable"
; however, Makiya makes no such admission in the book, which was published by a respected academic outlet, only offering standard-place caveats about the limitations of gathering evidence from inside closed-off and authoritarian societies. In another passage, Saucysalsa30 states:"It is true and verifiable that Kuwait and Saudi Arabia supported Iraq during the war, but the claim of a conspiracy and agreement between the 3 nations before the war to support Iraq and attack Iran is novel."
However, it is completely uncontroversial and widely documented in numerous academic sources that Iraq did consult with both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia regarding its invasion plans well before the invasion of Iran in September 1980, most notably during Saddam's visit to Saudi Arabia in August of that year. (For just one example, see "Saddam did so in August 1980, when he traveled to Saudi Arabia to consult with King Khalid about his invasion plans," but given that there are probably dozens of respected academic sources that could be cited, it is ridiculous that Saucysalsa30 depicts this fact as some sort of"novel"
conjecture or conspiracy theory. Moreover, there is evidence of Kuwaiti foreknowledge about Iraq's planned invasion as early as April 1980.) - Simply put, Saucysalsa30 is interested in making it appear that there is no consensus on even the most basic facts about the Iran–Iraq War, such as the generally-accepted (even according to the United Nations) fact that the invasion of Iran was a premeditated act of aggression by Iraq, that Iraq's claims of "preemption" are highly dubious, and that Iran was grossly unprepared for war at that time (and, in fact, had allowed Iraq to unilaterally abrogate the 1975 Algiers Agreement without taking any real response, thus begging the question of why Iraq still had to launch a massive invasion of Iran?). Instead, Saucysalsa30 would have you believe that the true origins of the war are shrouded in mystery and basically impossible to understand, which is not the case, especially as the Iraqi archives are now open and scholars such as Murray and Woods 2014 have written entire book-length studies of Iraqi decision-making during the war based on documents taken straight from the horse's mouth.
- Finally, while Saucysalsa30's claims of WP:OR and poor sourcing do not appear to be valid, his own edits are rife with original research and misuse of sources: Consider
"However, the claim of hoping to annex Khuzestan is contradicted by Saddam calling for a renewed diplomacy and successive ceasefire offers, one of which came in the first two weeks of the war, which Ayatollah Khomeini refused."
That edit (diff) uses an October 1980 Washington Post article stating only that"Iraqi Foreign Minister Saadoun Hammadi, at the United Nations in New York, renewed President Saddam Hussein's offer earlier this week for a four-day cease-fire in place that he said Iraq would honor as long as Iran did not fire on its troops. That possibility seemed negligible, to say the least, given the toe-to-toe fighting going on for the past 48 hours in Khorramshahr as well as several other places inside Iran's borders."
to call into question the numerous highly-respected sources repeating the (virtually universally-accepted) fact that Iraq sought to annex Khuzestan, despite The Washington Post not saying anything of the kind and such an interpretation being pure OR on Saucysalsa30's part. (In fact, The Washington Post's coverage makes clear that the four-day ceasefire was not a serious offer as Iraq continued to occupy Iranian territory!) In sum, if you ever needed a textbook example of WP:TENDENTIOUS editing, look no further than the walls of text above.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 12:27, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
- I've literally pointed out cases where sources were completely misquoted and failed verification, and your response is a series of personal attacks? Ironic coming from someone heavily invested in curating a very one-sided narrative and even using user-generated blogs as sources. There's even content on the article that does not even exist in the cited sources. Textbook definition of failed verification, and you defend that? The fact you choose to ignore addressing and even defend very obvious failed verification, original research, POV, bad sourcing, and a host of other issues, and instead delve in a serious of personal attacks is proof that you should be taken with a grain of salt, if not less.
- This part in your driveling response was funny though. "in fact, had allowed Iraq to unilaterally abrogate the 1975 Algiers Agreement without taking any real response". Is that why Iran abrogated the treaty on 14 September, 3 days before Iraq did, in a couple of the very sources already existing in this Wiki article? That was actually included in the fixing up of the article if you had bothered to read it. It's very obvious you push a one-sided, pseudo-true narrative on this and other pages, and of course this is further proof you should be taken with a grain of salt.
- Are you actually claiming that Washington Post is an unreliable source? So you nitpick and distort reliable sourcing by world-renowned publications, but then you use personal blog pages as "reliable sources"? That's very bizarre.
- You also did not address anything other than one thing, really. Seems like some a very selective (and self-defeating) argument. Nitpicking one thing and a barrage of personal attacks, and including how you're getting things wrong along with your own personal conjecture is a very poor defense of your position. So why is it you defend blatant original research, failed verification, textbook examples of terrible sourcing, and engage in childish attacks?
- Unfortunately, TheTimesAreAChanging has been engaged for years in creating very one-sided narratives in this and related Wiki articles, even defending the use of blog websites as sources and the original research on the article (for example, the Wikipedia article's content from Karsh directly contradicts what the book actually says). Saucysalsa30 (talk) 19:08, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
- I have never heard anyone claim that Iran was the first to abrogate the Algiers Agreement—that doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense as the prior treaty from 1937 gave Iraq near-total control over the Shatt and was forced on Iran by the British, whereas the Algiers Agreement benefitted Iran by requiring the two countries to share it more equitably—and a formal abrogation wouldn't change the very real reality that Iraq had already moved into the small strips of disputed territory prior to launching its massive invasion of Iran (without much in the form of an Iranian response). The Washington Post is obviously a very reliable source, and (contrary to your summary) it makes clear that the official statements by Saddam Hussein and Sa'dun Hammadi were not credible or a serious offer of even a four-day ceasefire. Your use of official statements by Iraqi government officials in contemporary news coverage to portray Saddam as a sincere peacemaker, while dismissing secondary sources and even the qualifiers in the contemporary reporting itself, is a violation of Wikipedia's content policies, particularly those regarding original research and neutrality. Beyond that, it may be time simply to let AN3 and SPI run their course.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:16, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
- "I have never heard anyone claim that Iran was the first to abrogate the Algiers Agreement" Ignorance is not a defense. Even the Karsh source that's been on this page for years states very clearly that Iran formally tossed it out on 14 September 1980. Your argument holds no basis since it is based on an appeal to ignorance and considering you were proven wrong. There is no mention of Hammadi or Saddam claiming that in Karsh's book, so you're going on a random tangent here and you are proven wrong here. Now that this argument has been refuted, could you please explain why you defend the use of user-generated blog pages as a source, and repeated violations of failed verification and original research? While we've already established you are dedicated to POV and a terribly misconstrued narrative, so what is your explanation for continually defending such blatant violations? Thanks. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 22:46, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
- Right, so to correct a minor mistake in my previous posts, I checked and Iraq forcibly reclaimed territory in two villages that Iran had promised to return in 1975 but never did on 10 September, leading Iran to renounce the Algiers Agreement on 14 September, and Iraq to do the same on 17 September. As a result, when Iraq launched a massive invasion of indisputably Iranian territory on 22 September, it did not have even a threadbare excuse about reclaiming "disputed territories." Sources:
- "On 7 September 1980, Iraq accused Iran of shelling Iraqi villages in the territories of Zain al-Qaws and Saif Saad on 4 September 1980. Iraq demanded that the Iranian forces in those territories evacuate and return the villages to Iraq. Tehran gave no reply. Iraqi forces then moved to 'liberate' the villages, and on 10 September announced that its forces had done so in a short, sharp military engagement. ... On 14 September 1980, Iran announced it would no longer abide by the 1975 Algiers Agreement. Given the scene that was set, it was no surprise that on 17 September, five days before the invasion, Iraq declared the accords null and void. ... On 22 September, Iraqi units crossed the frontier."—Murray, Williamson; Woods, Kevin M. (2014). "A context of 'bitterness and anger'". The Iran–Iraq War, A Military and Strategic History. Cambridge University Press. pp. 62-63 (e-book, page numbers approximate). ISBN 9781107062290.
- "There remains the issue of sovereignty over Shatt al-Arab. ... Granted that this might have been a genuine motive for abrogating the 1975 treaty, and reclaiming title to the whole Shatt, what was the point of the invasion on September 22? Iraq had taken back by unilateral action on September 10 the only strips of territory it still claimed under the treaty. There was no longer any 'territory' as such on the other side to conquer. The Ba'th had already followed the Shah's example of 1971 when he unilaterally took over the three islands in the Gulf."—Makiya, Kanan (1998). Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq, Updated Edition. University of California Press. p. 270. ISBN 9780520921245.
- I hope that clarifies things. For more, see the discussion here on the talk page of the main Iran–Iraq War article.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:37, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
- "I have never heard anyone claim that Iran was the first to abrogate the Algiers Agreement" Ignorance is not a defense. Even the Karsh source that's been on this page for years states very clearly that Iran formally tossed it out on 14 September 1980. Your argument holds no basis since it is based on an appeal to ignorance and considering you were proven wrong. There is no mention of Hammadi or Saddam claiming that in Karsh's book, so you're going on a random tangent here and you are proven wrong here. Now that this argument has been refuted, could you please explain why you defend the use of user-generated blog pages as a source, and repeated violations of failed verification and original research? While we've already established you are dedicated to POV and a terribly misconstrued narrative, so what is your explanation for continually defending such blatant violations? Thanks. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 22:46, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
- I have never heard anyone claim that Iran was the first to abrogate the Algiers Agreement—that doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense as the prior treaty from 1937 gave Iraq near-total control over the Shatt and was forced on Iran by the British, whereas the Algiers Agreement benefitted Iran by requiring the two countries to share it more equitably—and a formal abrogation wouldn't change the very real reality that Iraq had already moved into the small strips of disputed territory prior to launching its massive invasion of Iran (without much in the form of an Iranian response). The Washington Post is obviously a very reliable source, and (contrary to your summary) it makes clear that the official statements by Saddam Hussein and Sa'dun Hammadi were not credible or a serious offer of even a four-day ceasefire. Your use of official statements by Iraqi government officials in contemporary news coverage to portray Saddam as a sincere peacemaker, while dismissing secondary sources and even the qualifiers in the contemporary reporting itself, is a violation of Wikipedia's content policies, particularly those regarding original research and neutrality. Beyond that, it may be time simply to let AN3 and SPI run their course.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:16, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
- No ill-will meant, but had you realized this "minor mistake" (me being correct about the Iranian abrogation) earlier, it could have avoided the subsequent plea of ignorance regarding Iran disavowing the treaty and barrage of personal attacks across the site. Secondly, thanks for reminding me about the Murray source proving me right too, just as the Karsh source and others did, regarding Iran formally scrapping the treaty. I've read Murray and Woods before. But unfortunately your sources don't support the WP:OR conclusion, and in fact work to refute it. This OR conclusion is directly contradicted and refuted by 1) the terms of the Algiers Treaty under which half of the Shatt al-Arab was ceded specifically under the treaty's terms (which was no longer valid when Iran and then Iraq threw it out), and 2) Murray (yes, same book you're using there), Karsh, and other authors on the war. Of course this doesn't include other things like assassinations, terrorist attacks, airstrikes, cross-border attacks and fighting, and other actions, but that's another discussion. Also recall that the border with Iran had been previously set in the 1937 treaty, which the Shah had tossed out in 1969.
- An important part from that section from Murray is missing: "Given the scene that was set, it was no surprise that on 17 September, five days before the invasion, Iraq declared the accords null and void. Iraq alleged Iran had consistently violated the provisions of the Accords. Saddam’s announcement had the unmistakable ring of a declaration of war: “This shatt shall again be, as it has been throughout history, Iraqi and Arab in name and reality.” On 22 September, Iraqi units crossed the frontier." While the quote makes it obvious enough the goal was restoring the Shatt after Iran and then Iraq disposed the treaty, in earlier pages, Murray comments more on the situation of the Shatt and how the Iranian half was binding strictly under the treaty's terms. With the treaty no longer existing, so too did Iran's legal claim on the territory.
- From Karsh:
On 17 September 1980 Saddam Hussein addressed his newly re-instated parliament. 'The frequent and blatant Iranian violations of Iraqi sovereignty', he said, 'have rendered the 1975 Algiers Agreement null and void.' Both legally and politically the treaty was indivisible. Once its spirit had been violated, Iraq saw no alternative but to restore the legal position of the Shatt al-Arab to the pre-1975 status.
- Right then. So Iraq was restoring the legal position of the Shatt al-Arab to its pre-treaty status (as Iraqi territory), seeing as Iran threw out the treaty that allowed them to hold half of the Shatt. So being far more than a "threadbare excuse", Iraq became legally obliged to restore territory that after the Iranian abrogation was evidently disputed territory, as Karsh and others makes clear. Whether you want to call it Iran-occupied Iraqi territory or disputed territory is semantics, but conclusively, it was certainly in disputed status after 14 September. Before you attack me for this, I'm not saying it's a solid justification (though there were other justifications) nor do I think it is. As an Iraq vet, I'm very familiar with far worse and unsubstantiated justifications for war. But considering the general consensus of research says one thing, and the OR conclusion (and Makiya's personal monologue) say another regarding the territory, the former holds a lot more weight than the latter.
- Something also important from Murray: "Clearly, Saddam was aiming at launching military operations in the near future to warn Iran to cease and desist from interfering in Iraq’s internal affairs." This is also noted by Karsh, Razoux, etc. Karsh is even clear in noting this military action as an "act of last resort" with the goal of preventing further Iranian actions against Iraq. It's related to the disputed territory discussion, but just pointing it out as it was a greater motivation for military response from the Iraqi side.
- What value is added by quoting Kanan Makiya's personal conjecture and poor apples-and-oranges comparison? Surely one can do better than this. He mistakenly speaks on the basis of the terms of the treaty as if it was still in effect, which, after the 14th and 17th was no longer considered valid. It's confusing as to why Makiya implies the treaty still legally applied when neither side observed it any longer. After the treaty was formally scrapped by both sides, the half of the Shatt al-Arab ceded in the treaty was technically no longer validly Iranian territory as covered by Karsh, etc., hence being disputed. Further embarrassing, in Republic of Fear, Makiya is also quite clear in disclaiming he uses "stories and rumours" with no "firmer basis in fact". Nor is the book of any prominent or primary focus on the Iran-Iraq War nor claims to be a work of scholarship on it, either, so Makiya's oversights and errors are unsurprising.
- Fun fact: in the words of then-President Banisadr, neither the Shah nor the Islamic Republic applied the treaty's terms on Iran's end. That means it was a one-sided treaty to begin with.
- To put the above in simpler terms: Half of Shatt al-Arab was given to Iran specifically under the terms of the 1975 Algiers Treaty, following the 1937 treaty which gave the whole Shatt to Iraq. Iran and then Iraq scrapped the 1975 treaty, making it and its terms no longer valid or legal, meaning that the half of the Shatt al-Arab was no longer legally belonged to Iran. Ergo, the claim of no "threadbare excuse" regarding disputed territory unfortunately is at odds with the published research on the matter. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 08:40, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
- Edit: I read the text in Makiya's book again. Confirming it's his own conjecture and monologue. He ignores critical details such as Iran's abrogation of the treaty on 14 September (the treaty having given Iran half the Shatt, and by abrogating the treaty, losing that legal claim), and so makes a poor personal conclusion on the basis of incomplete information, coupled with a poor analogy, and gives his own odd personal solution to the dispute as putting artillery on each shore. The card-stacking fallacy nature of his conclusion aside, his justification for it is a weak analogy and novel conjecture. Given this, and the existence of better, more reliable sources focused on the war unlike this work and more recent than Makiya's book (the original publication was 1989) and more importantly refute/contradict Makiya, it makes for a shaky and low-value source on this matter. Not to mention the introduction's own disclaimers regarding the veracity of the book's content and self-admitted very unbalanced narrative which degrade it further. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 10:00, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
- Funny that you speak of the Iranian abrogation but ignore the fact that Iraq violated the terms of the treaty by occupying Iranian territory (the two villages) beforehand. Furthermore, the 1937 treaty was abrogated years before the Algiers Accords were signed, so the end of the Algiers Accords did not mean a return to that treaty, it meant no treaty at all. Hence the term "disputed territory", which due to the abrogation of both the 1937 and 1975 treaties applied just as equally to Iraq. Hence why no one outside of Iraq and its Arab allies claimed the Iranian side of the Shatt as occupied. As for your ridiculous claims of "terrorist attacks, airstrikes" and so on, very funny to only tell one part of the story and ignore Iraq's yearslong funding of terrorists in Iran's Khuzestan and Baluchistan, and its occupation and shelling of Iranian villages and border posts. You were already proven wrong before when you claimed Iraq didn't sponsor the Iranian Embassy Siege. Everything else you've written is pure WP:OR and WP:Synth, you don't get to call a source weak or conjecture just because you personally don't like it. -- Qahramani44 (talk) 17:05, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
- Could you please clarify on why quoting Karsh and Murray verbatim as I did is "WP:OR" and "WP:SYNTH"? Both books talk about Iraq looking to retake the Shatt following the disposal by both sides of the treaty. Your comment doesn't really add to the discussion other than a personal point of view.
- For example, let me ask you a very straight-forward question: WP:RS says "Content from websites whose content is largely user-generated is generally unacceptable. Sites with user-generated content include personal websites, personal and group blogs (excluding newspaper and magazine blogs), content farms, Internet forums, social media sites, video and image hosting services, most wikis, and other collaboratively created websites." So do you consider a user-generated blog (by its own admission) such as this http://www.iranchamber.com/about_us/about_us.php to be a reliable source? Why? Do you consider a 4-sentence angry blog post that adds as much value as a Donald Trump tweet calling for deportations like this https://web.archive.org/web/20160303203650/http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/concoughlin/5414437/Lets_deport_the_Iran_Embassy_siege_survivor_to_Iraq/# to be a reliable or even usable source? Only asking because instead of addressing anything, you're strictly engaging in edit warring and personal opinion. How was I proven wrong by the way? Regarding the embassy siege, I quoted from the SAS book sourced in an above Talk section which says it was a "sweeping and unsubstantiated claim". At best, that proves me right, or at the very least makes the matter contentious. Keep in mind too it's the only source here that covers the embassy siege and this particular piece in detail (Murray does not, except a couple passing words). In addition, TheTimesAreAChanging admitted to being wrong regarding the Algiers Treaty, having not known that Iran had formally disposed it beforehand as I had correctly stated. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 23:47, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
- Saucysalsa30, you are not displaying the type of basic honesty and integrity that is required to continue with a good-faith discussion. You are WP:BLUDGEONing this talk page with bad-faith arguments, making unnecessarily aggressive personal comments, and playing chess with extra pieces. You are also dwelling on minor inaccuracies or sourcing issues that I have already resolved to justify throwing out the nearly-universal consensus in RS (not to mention in the view of the UN and the current government of Iraq) regarding the origins of the Iran–Iraq War (namely, that Iraq launched an illegal and militarily unnecessary invasion of Iran, which cannot be justified by reference to any of Iraq's stated grievances, including the fact that Iran had previously pushed Iraq around during the time of the ousted Shah).
- The Iranian Embassy siege is a relatively minor part of this topic, but your discussion of it is an instructive example of your constantly changing arguments and shifting goalposts, not to mention misrepresentations of RS and the factual record. On that article (which happens to be a Featured Article, meaning that Wikipedia contributors have selected it as an example of one of the most high-quality articles on the website), you inserted unsourced commentary into the lede to the effect that the front organization responsible for the siege (which, strangely enough, evaporated into nothing without Iraqi sponsorship) "was a purely Iranian group ... undermined by allegations that it was backed by the Iraqi government," a totally INSANE proposition that no RS supports, falsely claiming to have
"Removed WP:OR"
in your edit summary despite your unsourced commentary being a textbook example of original research! (One of the page watchers quickly dispensed with your edit, noting: "No OR here; that's straight from multiple sources. They used Iraqi passports and an Iraqi diplomatic bag; the connection to Iraq is not really in doubt.") When you demanded more recent academic sources to establish Iraqi involvement, I noted that Murray and Woods (Cambridge University Press, 2014) states that"a group of Iranian Arabs, recruited and trained by the Iraqis, seized the Iranian embassy in London."
Yet you still refused to WP:DROPTHESTICK. Now you complain that Murray and Woods 2014 is an inadequate source because it does not cover the siege "in detail," while an older source with more details (but that may potentially be based on outdated or incomplete information) "refutes" the claim of Iraqi sponsorship. Except, er, the latter source doesn't actually "refute" anything of the kind: Rather, in the excerpt that you provided, it pours cold water on the notion that the siege was a far-reaching conspiracy involving the U.S. and U.K. governments as well as Iraq, a totally distinct contention. Notwithstanding that sleight-of-hand, you have not presented ANY sources to challenge the (again, nearly-universal, as Iraq made no serious effort to hide its role or to preserve "plausible deniability") consensus regarding Iraqi sponsorship of the siege. This single relatively minor issue alone has numerous editors bending over backwards to provide a wide range of sources, both in the mainstream press and academia, to "prove" a totally noncontroversial, amply-documented fact to your satisfaction, yet you dismiss virtually all of the RS out of hand because they don't tell you what you want to hear, while adding nothing to the conversation yourself. Frankly, the time of Wikipedia volunteers has value, and it seems as though you are hoping to exhaust enough of it to force your POV changes through when you engage in this level of obstructionism and denial of the reality documented in RS. - Another example of aggressive personalization of the dispute and playing chess with extra pieces:
"So do you consider a user-generated blog (by its own admission) ..."
First of all, Iran Chamber does not appear to be a blog or a user-generated source like Wikipedia; there is certainly no "admission" of anything like that on its "About" page, as far as I can tell at least. I have already replaced or supplemented many of the links to Iran Chamber with academic RS (and everything that it has been cited for seems to check out thus far), but if you have a question about source reliability then that is a matter of community consensus and should be broached at WP:RSN; I find it striking that, instead of making a case at RSN, you have repeatedly sought to trap random editors (including Qahramani44 and myself, when I have never cited Iran Chamber and know essentially nothing about its reputation for fact-checking and editorial oversight) with "gotcha!" questions like the above (or the even more pointed "Really? You claim that's a good source"), when even answering the question requires one to go along with the bad-faith premises that individual editor opinion is relevant to determining source reliability and that Iran Chamber is"a user-generated blog (by its own admission)"
(which, again, has yet to be demonstrated). - This comment is long enough, and I don't want to play into your hand by leaving a td;dr refutation of your seemingly deliberately dishonest points that only adds to the confusion that a casual reader would doubtless experience while navigating this talk page, but you are very selective in your references to Murray and Woods 2014. Murray and Woods 2014 includes content describing Iraqi war aims from the Iraqi POV, such as
"Clearly, Saddam was aiming at launching military operations in the near future to warn Iran to cease and desist from interfering in Iraq's internal affairs"
or"Saddam's territorial goals were modest at the outset, although they would have stripped Iran of some of its most significant oil fields"
(a statement immediately clarified by the disclaimer that"However, Saddam made clear on a number of occasions that he would have been delighted to expand his war aims, had Iraqi forces been more successful"
), and it would be easy for a POV-pushing editor to take such statements out-of-context in order to promote a counter-factual narrative that is more favorable to Iraq than the work, in its totality, can reasonably be construed to support; however, Murray and Woods 2014 also makes clear in numerous passages that Iran posed no military threat to Iraq in September 1980, that Iraq in fact invaded Iran out of a sense that Iran had been greatly weakened by the fall of the Shah and was a convenient target of opportunity, and that Iraqi military intelligence was fully aware of this, telling Saddam on 14 September 1980 (amid a constant barrage of cross-border skirmishes and bellicose rhetoric from both sides) that"the enemy deployment organization does not indicate hostile intentions and appears to be taking on a more defensive mode."
- BTW, to turn your style of "gotcha!" questions back around: "Do you still believe that Saddam's August 1980 trip to Saudi Arabia consisted of mere diplomatic pleasantries totally unrelated to his imminent plans to invade Iran in a matter of weeks, or have you admitted that you were wrong?" (To clarify, I would not normally be so impolite, but I am responding in kind to Saucysalsa30's rhetorical style. As an advocate of WP:FRINGE or, at best, minority viewpoints, he would be better served by humbly acknowledging that he is in the minority relative to the bulk of published reliable sources, and nevertheless politely pleading to fix minor inaccuracies or to water down overly harsh language, rather than coming in here with an aim to blow up the entire article, delete thousands of bytes worth of sourced material, BLUDGEON the talk page, and demean everyone that disagrees with him using the most vituperative language/tactics imaginable.)TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 06:44, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
- For example, let me ask you a very straight-forward question: WP:RS says "Content from websites whose content is largely user-generated is generally unacceptable. Sites with user-generated content include personal websites, personal and group blogs (excluding newspaper and magazine blogs), content farms, Internet forums, social media sites, video and image hosting services, most wikis, and other collaboratively created websites." So do you consider a user-generated blog (by its own admission) such as this http://www.iranchamber.com/about_us/about_us.php to be a reliable source? Why? Do you consider a 4-sentence angry blog post that adds as much value as a Donald Trump tweet calling for deportations like this https://web.archive.org/web/20160303203650/http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/concoughlin/5414437/Lets_deport_the_Iran_Embassy_siege_survivor_to_Iraq/# to be a reliable or even usable source? Only asking because instead of addressing anything, you're strictly engaging in edit warring and personal opinion. How was I proven wrong by the way? Regarding the embassy siege, I quoted from the SAS book sourced in an above Talk section which says it was a "sweeping and unsubstantiated claim". At best, that proves me right, or at the very least makes the matter contentious. Keep in mind too it's the only source here that covers the embassy siege and this particular piece in detail (Murray does not, except a couple passing words). In addition, TheTimesAreAChanging admitted to being wrong regarding the Algiers Treaty, having not known that Iran had formally disposed it beforehand as I had correctly stated. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 23:47, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
- TheTimesAreAChanging, instead of writing a wall of text to speak on tangents and make personal attacks, could you instead actually address the discussion? Your response to simple questions about someone's user-generated content blog website (which has already been demonstrated with a Talk section dedicated to it, and which they admit themselves and which you continue to deny, I don't know how many times I have to link this) being used as a source is to call someone dishonest and lacking integrity? Simply put, your reaction to uncontroversial points is denial along with personal attacks, false accusations, and harassment across this website, which reflects very poorly.
- I hate to say it, but it's apparent over and over that your automatic response to anyone asking to argue your point or proving you wrong is to go on personal attacks. This is not only lacking completely in integrity, but is textbook bad-faith editing. The irony of some of the false accusations is your own demonstration of all of the accused behavior. For example, how you denied and attacked me due to you being ignorant about some history, to attacking myself and others on the website with personal attacks and sockpuppet accusations, only to then admit you were wrong about the history you were ignorant on. The fact you tried to get multiple users blocked as a result of an inability to deal with being proven wrong is also evident of that. Instead of continuing on the path of WP:ADVOCACY, WP:TEAR, WP:BLUDGEON, WP:IDONTLIKETHIS, and other poor behavior exhibited by yourself and Qahramani44 (who it would appear you are canvassing with), why not engage in WP:BRD and civil discussion instead?
- So can you explain how an blog site managed by anonymous individual(s) that asks for user contributions "Herewith, Iran Chamber Society sincerely invites all Iranian and non-Iranian scholars and researchers to become contributing members and publish their articles and research papers on this platform and share them with the rest of the world", and which only contains blog articles with no reference, attribution, or other details, is a reliable and solid source to use? Why is it so difficult to answer this question? Given your very clear denial of an uncontroversial violation of WP:RS that is spelled out in very clear terms against the use of user-generated content blogs, how is anyone supposed to take seriously that you aren't pushing a POV narrative and editing the site in a very activist/partisan-type manner? Saucysalsa30 (talk) 00:04, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
Result of RSN and other discussions: No evidence of Iran Chamber Society being a reliable source, or anything more than a personal UGC website
[edit]This may not be too comfortable for certain activists, but after Talk, RS Noticeboard, and other discussions, there's no evidence or argument for Iran Chamber Society being a reliable source, or it being anything more than someone's personal website. It fits the category of UGC content. The pages on the website are either unattributed (presumably written by the site owner(s)) including the site's controversial Iran-Iraq War page cited here, or attributed with name only and are verbatim copy-pastes from existing works or even random posts on other random websites, as had been demonstrated in the RS noticeboard discussion. One thing to note is that on Wikipedia, the burden is on proving the source is reliable in the first place, not the other way around. The effort taken to go around discussing this has further demonstrated the lack of a case for its reliability.
While this Wikipedia article and related articles, including the main Iran-Iraq war article, suffer from a fair degree of poor sources, failed verification, and evident POV editing, the example of Iran Chamber Society and its defense amounting to WP:ILIKEIT should serve as an eye-opener regarding these issues. Per Wiki guidelines, "Content from websites whose content is largely user-generated is generally unacceptable", and this condones the removal of Iran Chamber Society source on this article due to being an unacceptable source. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 07:34, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
- TheTimesAreAChanging have you been able to find anything? Otherwise it looks to be time to do away with a bad source. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 18:05, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
- In that case, considering there's been no evidence or argument of Iran Chamber Society being a reliable source and plenty to the contrary in almost 2 months of actively seeking external insight and scrutiny, I'll go ahead and take care of it. Please bear in mind the WP:BURDEN is on adding or restoring a source, not removing it. The efforts, scrutiny, and discussions regarding Iran Chamber Society have instead exposed it moreso to be non-RS, and given some of their pages are copy-pastes from existing works the website is probably committing copyright infringement. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 05:26, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
POV/OR/CONTEXTMATTERS on a claim, and based on an out-of-context quote
[edit]Recently a POV/OR claim was added that takes a quote from Woods/Murray out of context then exaggerates it. Specifically added to this article, "He also openly aspired to conquer and annex Iran's Khuzestan Province to Iraq, seeing the war as an opportunity to do so."
The passage this alludes to is a record of a meeting, in which is:
Clearly, Saddam was aiming at launching military operations in the near future to warn Iran to cease and desist from interfering in Iraq’s internal affairs. Should that not work, the dictator was also eager to take advantage of the revolutionary turmoil in Tehran to push further advances into the “heartland of Iran” if those operations succeeded. Certainly Saddam believed that the oil-rich areas of Arabistan (Khuzestan) were within his reach, a goal his intelligence services seemed delighted to further. Another bonus, not mentioned in the meeting recorded in the 16 September document, was the possibility that military operations would cause Khomeini’s regime to collapse, its replacement more amenable to Iraqi interests.
How a private meeting with ministers was turned into "openly aspired" and a generic note by the authors about musings in this particular meeting as "conquer and annex Iran's Khuzestan province" is OR and POV. Clearer though, is the military operations were with the intent of making Iran desist from interfering in Iraqi affairs, a common if not universal theme among published works on the conflict.
Even if a case could be made for the stretch added in the Wiki article, it is contradicted a short bit later in the same work.
For the benefit of his staff, he noted that Khuzestan should be an autonomous region “closely linked with Iraq.”
...
He had hoped for a quick and limited campaign that would send a message to the ayatollahs to desist from attempting to overthrow his Ba’ath regime. Saddam did suggest in a press conference in November 1980 that Iraq would demand “additional rights” from the Iranians, although he conceded Iraq was not making any territorial demands, including Khuzestan, on the Iranians.
Other sources on the war are in line as a response to Iranian actions and over the Shatt al-Arab dispute. To give a couple examples:
“The militancy of the Iranians stood in sharp contrast to Iraq's appeasing approach. Not only did the ruling Ba'th regime refuse to exploit the revolutionary strife in Iran for political or territorial gains, but it extended a hand of friendship to the new rulers in Tehran: the Iranian Prime Minister, Mehdi Bazargan, was invited to visit Baghdad, Iraq offered its good offices in case Iran decided to join the non-aligned movement, and the revolutionary regime was praised for reinforcing the 'deep historical relations' between the two peoples. (...) Iran's subversive activities in general - and the protracted and escalating border fighting in particular - put the Iraqi leadership in an almost impossible position ... Nor did Saddam's territorial aims go beyond the Shatt al-Arab and a small portion of the southern region of Khuzestan” Karsh, pg. 13-14, 27
“The Iraqi dictator was firmly convinced that Ayatollah Khomeini would no longer compromise and that he would stop at nothing to bring Saddam down. Saddam Hussein came to the logical conclusion that in order to preserve his power, he needed to preemptively attack Iran. He hoped this would weaken Khomeini and possibly precipitate his downfall. Most importantly, he would be able to reestablish Iraqi sovereignty over the entire Shatt al- Arab and erase the affront of the Algiers Accord, which had been a personal humiliation.” Razoux, pg. 6
- Using weasel words still fails to make your incredibly drawn out arguments credible. Saddam multiple times even before the war made aggressive territorial claims against Iran, in fact this was the exact reason why the Shah supported Kurdish rebels in Iraq in the 70s:
- "In 1969, Saddam Hussein, Iraq's deputy prime minister, stated: "Iraq's dispute with Iran is in connection with Khuzestan, which is part of Iraq's soil and was annexed to Iran during foreign rule.""[1] You've still yet to establish any credible justification for removing this source, much like you failed to do so for this source here [1]. -- User:Qahramani44 17:14, January 19, 2021 (UTC)
- The source, and other sources, contradict the addition, as already demonstrated. You are engaging in POV and OR and bad faith editing. Nor do I see how being "successful" (for lack of a better word) is "failure" on that noticeboard, when consensus was reached by several users. Your incessant stalking and harassment of me across various pages is obviously not a good show of behavior. See WP:HARASSMENT, in particular WP:HOUNDING, and WP:NPA. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 17:37, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
- Saucysalsa30, as I'm sure you're well aware, the Iraqi invasion of Iran had stalled by November 1980 as Saddam realized that he had bitten off more than he could chew, hence why he publicly renounced his claims to Khuzestan around that time. There is a bit of a bait-and-switch going on in that your excerpts jump back-and-forth between September 1980 and November 1980, but there is no actual "contradiction"; the facts on the ground simply changed tremendously within a two-month period. (Indeed, the bit about how Saddam
"had hoped for a quick and limited campaign ... ,"
past tense, should be a dead giveaway regarding the contents of the passage that you are selectively quoting from.) As Murray and Woods reiterate,"Saddam made clear on a number of occasions that he would have been delighted to expand his war aims, had Iraqi forces been more successful."
TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 18:15, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
- Saucysalsa30, as I'm sure you're well aware, the Iraqi invasion of Iran had stalled by November 1980 as Saddam realized that he had bitten off more than he could chew, hence why he publicly renounced his claims to Khuzestan around that time. There is a bit of a bait-and-switch going on in that your excerpts jump back-and-forth between September 1980 and November 1980, but there is no actual "contradiction"; the facts on the ground simply changed tremendously within a two-month period. (Indeed, the bit about how Saddam
- The source, and other sources, contradict the addition, as already demonstrated. You are engaging in POV and OR and bad faith editing. Nor do I see how being "successful" (for lack of a better word) is "failure" on that noticeboard, when consensus was reached by several users. Your incessant stalking and harassment of me across various pages is obviously not a good show of behavior. See WP:HARASSMENT, in particular WP:HOUNDING, and WP:NPA. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 17:37, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
- TheTimesAreAChanging, thanks for the aside on a technicality, but considering the message I noted is generally consistent across sources, this looks like a case of WP:CHERRYPICKING. And considering Qahramani44's two edits were 1) putting a source directly contradicting the content on the article regarding Arab uprisings (that was an oops!), and 2) a rather partial POV statement with OR, along with various harassment and PA's and admission of WP:BATTLEGROUND including a formal admin warning on other parts of the site in the last 24 hours, the poor editing by the user is unsurprising. Removing a failed verification tag, for example, just because, despite being demonstrably necessary, was in poor taste. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 18:38, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
- Funny you speak of warring and poor editing when you yourself were warned by an admin on the RSN for constantly pinging him [2]. Don't throw hypocritical accusations out, it only makes you look more like a WP:NOTHERE editor, your baseless accusations of sockpuppetry were already bad enough. At this point you've been reverted by three users yet you still persist in edit-warring on multiple pages, attempting to remove sourced reliable paragraphs. --Qahramani44 (talk) 18:43, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
- I'm sorry, but you've proven time and time again you engage in bad faith and poor editing, have admitted to ideological WP:BATTLEGROUND editing, have defended unacceptably bad sources (such as blogs) per Wiki guidelines as "good" only to become very upset when 2 months worth of consensus are against you (as demonstrated here), and have engaged in consistent stalking and personal attacks and copyright violations and more, all of this just within the last 24 hours nevermind on other occasions. If your only defense of poor editing is stalking and personal attacks, you should maybe consider taking a break from using this platform.
- Oh, and on the topic of that FTN discussion, it was unanimous in my favor so I'm not sure why you bring that up. Even the one user who was confused about the situation ultimately agreed, too. But thanks for confirming again that you're stalking me, I guess. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 19:12, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
- On the contrary the FTN discussion clearly states that Coughlin's book is a reliable source, so I don't know why you're claiming otherwise. You've yet to establish any sort of consensus and in fact you've been continually reverting multiple users on multiple talk pages for months now. Making baseless personal attacks and irrational claims of "stalking" is quite funny but only makes you look even more WP:NOTHERE. I recommend you take a break instead of constantly fighting multiple users and admins on Wikipedia. --User:Qahramani44 19:27, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
- No, the FTN discussion in fact achieved the opposite considering even the one user who was initially confused about the matter was refuted by several users and eventually even agreed with it. Also, the discussion was not focused on Coughlin's book, but moreso on a specific fringe theory within the book. You are wrong yet again, and anyways, that isn't even relevant to this discussion. Stop using Wikipedia as your ideological battleground and your platform to stalk/harass and make personal attacks against people. Most of your editing is reverting edits if it defies your self-admitted battlegrounding along with a mix of blatant failed verification edits, and woefully obvious POV and OR. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 19:42, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
- On the contrary the FTN discussion clearly states that Coughlin's book is a reliable source, so I don't know why you're claiming otherwise. You've yet to establish any sort of consensus and in fact you've been continually reverting multiple users on multiple talk pages for months now. Making baseless personal attacks and irrational claims of "stalking" is quite funny but only makes you look even more WP:NOTHERE. I recommend you take a break instead of constantly fighting multiple users and admins on Wikipedia. --User:Qahramani44 19:27, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
References
- ^ Rajaee, Farhang, ed. (1993). The Iran–Iraq War: The Politics of Aggression. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. ISBN 978-0-8130-1177-6.
- C-Class military history articles
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