Talk:Views on military action against Iran/Archive 1

Archive 1

911 conspiracy theories

Someone claims that opposition to war against Iran is somehow linked to 911 conspiracy theories:

1. (cur) (last) 16:33, 15 January 2007 69.116.234.208 (Talk) (See also - It is a fact that without 9/11 nobody would be talking about Iran today. Also I am not supporting any theory here but only providing an internal link to the article.)
2. (cur) (last) 23:05, 12 January 2007 Boud (Talk | contribs) (removing orginal research link to 911 conspiracy theories - if someone sees a link to 911 conspiracy theories, then please explain it on the talk page and check WP:NOR)

It is a fact that without 9/11 nobody would be talking about Iran today. Sorry, this is totally unclear and any guesses as what you are trying to say would probably count as original research, which should not be written in an encyclopedia article. i fail to see any link. Please explain it. Boud 03:44, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

i had a look at 9/11 conspiracy theories. It has only one occurrence of the word "Iran" and the paragraph referring to Iran says nothing about opposition to war against Iran. It just cites the personal opinion of the president of Iran regarding the Sep 2001 attacks. i can imagine that Ahmadinejad may be opposed to war against Iran, but that is not discussed in the 911 article, and some people would also argue that Ahmadinejad is in favour of a war against Iran, since he may calculate that it is likely to boost his popular support (which is dropping). In any case, that is just one paragraph in a very long article, so the link is much too weak IMHO. Boud 03:51, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Reuters/Zogby poll

I've removed the information on the Reuters/Zogby poll for several reasons:

1. This article misrepresents the actual poll data. For example, the sentence: "Majority public opinion in the US in late 2006 was reported to be opposed to an attack" in the introduction does not reflect what the actual poll was saying. If you look at the actual data from Reuters [Majority public opinion in the US in late 2006 was reported to be opposed to an attack], you'll see that while 70% disapproved of sending US troops into Iran, 56% supported joint US-European military intervention in Iran. This is not mentioned in the paragraph about the poll itself.
2. Polling is ephemeral. It reflects one study of public opinion at one particular time and it really isn't a good idea to generalize about public opinion in an entire country from one poll. In this case, you can see that what the respondents to this poll thought in late-September did not reflect how Americans voted in early November. According to this poll, Americans preferred that Democrats win back control of Congress by a 1% margin (42%-41%), when in fact the actual results were 52%-46% in the House and 54%-42% in the Senate (not including votes for independents Lieberman and Sanders who caucus with the Dems). 5-12% is not an acceptable margin of error for a poll.
3. The Yahoo page which is cited in the article is no longer live. I am assuming that the same article is on Reuters' site here[1].

However, at least one fact in our article is NOT in the Reuters article (only 9% supporting an airstrike), and one relevant fact in the Reuters article (that 42% would support an Israeli strike) is not in the wikipedia article. It is highly POV to cherrypick only the facts in an article that support your POV. GabrielF 21:28, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

The yahoo page is no longer live, that's correct. http://elections.us.reuters.com/top/news/usnN27288539.html does seem to be the same page.

i don't see anywhere in it referring to "56% supported joint US-European military intervention".

Your claim about polling being "ephemeral" is irrelevant. Whether or not a given opinion poll is accurate or enough to measure the opinion of "an entire country" is OR. In general, if an opinion poll is done properly, the margins of error should be a few percent. Your argument to dismiss the Reuters/Zogby poll is that a certain opinion poll before the USA November parliamentary elections was about 5-12% different from the final results in the election. i don't see why this is relevant. Public opinon changes with time, especially during an electoral period. And an error of 10% is still small enough for the results to give people a rough idea of what public opinion is. In the case of this article, 12% error would still leave a majority of US citizens being opposed to sending soldiers into Iran.

at least one fact in our article is NOT in the Reuters article (only 9% supporting an airstrike). Try reading it again: Nine percent favored air strikes on selected military targets in Iran.

42% would support an Israeli strike - i've added this.

cherrypick only the facts in an article that support your POV.. Please remember the wikipedia policy of assuming good faith.

Boud 01:29, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

i reintroduced the material with the corrections i just mentioned. Wikipedia is not the place where you can remove an opinion poll results because you disagree with the concept of opinion polling. Opinion polling is widely used. Readers will decide for themselves how accurate or inaccurate opinion polls are, depending on their own judgments of the care with which the polling organisations design, carry out, analyse and publish the poll results, and of biases they expect in the polling organisations. If you can add other verifiably published opinion polls which give different results from the same or different time periods and for the same or different geographical regions of this planet, please do so. That will add more depth to the section. Thanks. The theme of this article is opposition to war against Iran. Any information on what public opinion is about war against Iran is surely relevant to an encyclopedic article. Boud 01:54, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

See the actual poll data here: [2] - for the 56% figure.

Here's a whole bunch of polling data on Iran. [3] As you can clearly see from looking at multiple polls taking at different times, public opinion shifts drastically on this issue depending on exactly what question you ask and when you ask it. GabrielF 00:49, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for providing a link to what looks like related Reuters/Zogby poll data. i will integrate the 56% figure. It may be true that public opinion shifts "drastically". In that case it is our task to look at the data and then summarise it according to NPOV and add it or update the wikipedia article, not delete the existing section. Boud 19:16, 27 February 2007 (UTC) Boud 19:57, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

GabrielF - i've done the work for you. i may have missed some stuff, so feel free to correct any errors. i did my best to be objective. The questions i found on your link which had no leading information agreed with the Reuters/Zogby poll. The questions with leading information (e.g. making the allegation that Iran has a nuclear weapons development program, despite the head of state opposing it on religious grounds and the IAEA finding no evidence for Iran having any nuclear weapons development program) gave a bigger range of answers - some (unsurprisingly) gave minorities opposing the attack; some (surprisingly) gave majorities opposing the attack even given the leading information. The "surprisingly" here is not part of the wikipedia article - it's only a side comment on this discussion page. Your effort finding more opinon poll data was useful - thanks. But please don't remove the section again. Boud 21:24, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Wesley Clark's StopIranWar.com

Just a note that there is a new antiwar site from Wesley Clark, a prominent individual: StopIranWar.com --70.51.232.108 19:07, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

the claim that US concerns over Iran and weapons of mass destruction are THE reason for a would-be attack on Iran

Beginning in early 2005, journalists, activists and academics such as Seymour Hersh, Scott Ritter, Joseph Cirincione and Jorge E. Hirsch began publishing claims that American concerns over the potential threat posed by Iran's nuclear program might lead the US government to take military action against that country in the future.

GabrielF: that American concerns over the potential threat posed by Iran's nuclear program might lead is POV and OR. You have attempted to claim the reason stated by those authors for a US attack on Iran, in contradiction to what those authors stated. Just because a statement is repeated many, many times by the corporate media without any sources does not make it a verifiable fact in the wikipedia sense. The hidden link Iran and weapons of mass destruction|Iran's nuclear program is also highly misleading. Iran's nuclear program and Iran and weapons of mass destruction are two different articles for very good reasons. Please respect NPOV.

Boud 01:07, 26 February 2007 (UTC) Strike-through added, see discussion below. Boud 22:23, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that saying the US is planning to attack Iran without providing any context is OR. Also, my version is more in line with what the sources below are saying. For example:

Ritter: "When I asked why that date, the source dropped the bombshell: because that was when the Pentagon was told to be prepared to launch a massive aerial attack against Iran, Iraq's neighbor to the east, in order to destroy the Iranian nuclear program."

Hersh: "The immediate goals of the attacks would be to destroy, or at least temporarily derail, Iran’s ability to go nuclear." Hersh talks about other, secondary motives, but clearly he believes the nuclear issue is the administration's primary concern.

Cirincione does not directly attribute a motive to the administration, but we can imply from his article that he assumes the nuclear issue is the administration's primary concern. For example, the opening sentence: "I used to think that the Bush administration wasn’t seriously considering a military strike on Iran, because it would only accelerate Iran’s nuclear program." He also spends considerably more time discussing the nuclear issue than any other issue.

Zunes "However, despite the fact that there is no evidence that Iran is even developing nuclear weapons in the first place, the Bush administration and Congressional leaders of both parties argue that simply having the technology which would make it theoretically possible for Iran to manufacture a nuclear weapon at some point in the future is sufficient casus belli. As part of his desperate search for enemies, President Bush claimed in January that a nuclear-armed Iran would be “a grave threat to the security of the world,” words that echoed language he used in reference to Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion of that oil-rich country. Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney vowed “meaningful consequences” if Iran did not give up its nuclear program and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton claimed there would be “tangible and painful consequences” if Iran did not cooperate." Again, he focuses primarily on the nuclear issue.

If you still think I am contradicting the authors, please provide evidence that I am doing so. GabrielF 00:41, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Sure.

Hersh: "The immediate goals of the attacks would be to destroy, or at least temporarily derail, Iran’s ability to go nuclear. But there are other, equally purposeful, motives at work. The government consultant told me that the hawks in the Pentagon, in private discussions, have been urging a limited attack on Iran because they believe it could lead to a toppling of the religious leadership." You forgot the "other equally purposeful motives".

Ritter: "The Israelis are concerned that if the Iranians get their nuclear enrichment program up and running, then there will be no way to stop the Iranians from getting a nuclear weapon. June 2005 is seen as the decisive date." i agree - Ritter's POV is that the fear that Iran has a nuclear weapons program is the main reason for the possible attack

Cirincione i agree with you on Cirincione's article

Zunes Zunes does say that claims about Iran developing nuclear weapons is being used as a casus belli, a reason for attacking Iran, but he is sceptical about the claims being true and argues that deception is being used by various individuals/groups in the US in order to justify an attack on Iran due to Iran's would-be nuclear weapons program. But it's true that he doesn't state any alternative reasons for why the US would wish to attack Iran except indirectly, such as "United States has frequently used Israel to advance its strategic interests in the region and beyond" without stating whether opposing an apparently not-so-threatening (according to Zunes) Iranian nuclear program is part of these strategic interests or not. (i could guess "reading between the lines" what he believes are the strategic interests, but that would be getting more into postmodernist hagiography style analysis of an author's hidden intentions rather than what s/he actually states, and would reduce any chance of us converging.)

Giraldi: "The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States." Hmmmm.... He says that a terrorist attack would be used as an excuse whether or not Iran was actually involved. But that's irrelevant for the reasons for wishing to attack Iran. i guess he does imply that suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites are a major reason.

Chossudovsky "The "surgical strikes" are presented to world public opinion as a means to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons." He disagrees that preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons is the real reason for a would-be attack. He doesn't state what he believes to be the true reason.

GabrielF: i've put a strike through my claims above of you putting in POV and OR. If i have the time to grab other sources later on, the situation may change, but it will not change the fact that i was wrong to state that you did POV + OR regarding the claims by the authors presently cited. You have my apologies. A slight change in wording to NPOV it is still necessary, but that's another step. Boud 22:23, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Chomsky and Hirsch (in another article than the one previously referenced) very clearly dismiss Iran's possible development of nuclear weapons as not being the main reason for a would-be attack; Chomsky claims control of energy resources ("oil"), Hirsch claims the US showing that it is willing to use nuclear weapons. i've added these. i hadn't realised before that not many of the above analysts had made similar statements. Or maybe they have, but not in the articles cited. Boud 23:06, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran...

I know a lot of people (including myself) support military action against Iran, and there's a section in this article about "Support for an attack".

Shouldn't there also be a "Support for war against Iran" article?

--Warweed62 05:32, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I believe this should be addressed as "The Iranian War Against America" because the Iranians have been at war with America since the Carter administration. The idea of starting a war now is kind of bunk because we're already there.

72.178.131.225 04:06, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I too personally support military action against Iran, however I do not think that "The Iraninan War Against America" is an appropriate name for a Wikipedia article... while you an I may feel that this is the case, the name is nevertheless bias towards our point of view, excluding other points of view, which is contrary to Wikipedia's goals and policies. Rudy Breteler 16:00, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

merge|Support for military action against Iran

The administrator that closed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Support for war against Iran suggested this article be merged with Support for military action against Iran--Victor falk 17:55, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Don't Merge In case of catastrophic war it's important that people know that Israel and its supporters were the main people pushing the war, as the Support for page does show - and copious more evidence can be added and I might do so. Merging them would set off too many editing wars, especially if there is a real war, at least for the few days until the whole thing escalates into nuclear holocaust.

Carol Moore 15:54, 14 October 2007 (UTC)User:Carolmooredc User talk:Carolmooredc

(re: Carol Moore 15:54, 14 October 2007 (UTC)User:Carolmooredc User talk:Carolmooredc "don't merge") Wikipedia was not designed for you to be able to make your arguments on one page and the other side to make their arguments on the other page. We are a community committed to unbias presentation of knowledge and facts, not a platform for your delusional opinions on the world. Rudy Breteler 04:51, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Nuclear holocaust is more likely to be on a 10-20 year timeline if the "hot" attack against Iran happens, since the main effects of the war would be to motivate Iran to start a nuclear weapons programme and secondly, to destroy the credibility of the IAEA and the minimal respect given presently to the NPT, leading to about 20-30 States around the world to develop their own nuclear arsenals of a few dozen up to a few hundred warheads each. The chance of their use in conflict would increase greatly. Boud 22:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

merge These two topics are directly related. They should be put into one page, per wikipedia's guidlines designed to reduce redundency. This one page would have a nutral name and address both the support for military action against Iran and the opposition to it. Rudy Breteler 04:47, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

don't merge While the two topics are clearly related, they are different topics and they have mostly non-overlapping material. War is not peace except under orwellian logic. This article is part of the Anti-war WikiProject because that is its subject. Boud 22:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

FYI the reason war vs Iran easily could escalate to world nuclear war is that the US (or Israel) probably will end up using nuclear weaspons, if not in a first strike, in a retaliatory strike. Iran is just a few hundred miles from Russia, their radar could be effected by EMP, radiation could pour over the borders. And the Russians are very paranoid about a US first strike and things could escalate. And then there are the Pakistani radicals who could take over Pakistan's nukes and do who knows what could happen next.

Carol Moore 01:19, 29 October 2007 (UTC)User:Carolmooredc User talk:Carolmooredc

Re: Carol Moore, as is stipulated in the discussion header, Wikipedia is not a discussion forum. Please refrain from such posts as these, even on the talk pages. Rudy Breteler 16:04, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

When can we delete that note on front page?? Carol Moore 22:40, 8 November 2007 (UTC)User:Carolmooredc User talk:Carolmooredc

Tomorrow 11 Nov it will be one month from when it got put there and nobody seems to be terribly convinced about the need to merge. i suggest we give it another week, till 18 Nov, and unless someone objects by then, we remove the note. Boud 00:59, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

There is disagreement. Several of us still believe that the articles should be merged. The guidlines for Wikipedia support our stance. The note should remain. Rudy Breteler 16:16, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

NPOV, Original Research, etc.

The polling section is truly horrendous, and this business about leading polls should source some actual authority and fall under a criticism section. As it stands now, this page is more of a screed than an article. --Rev Prez (talk) 10:49, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Whether a poll question is "leading" or not is not a matter of judgment requiring an authority. It's about whether the question is a simple question such as "do you support X?" or a conditional question such as "knowing that X does action Y, would you support action Z towards X?" where X could be a person or an organisation or a country, for example. The second sort of question is leading. Another leading question could be "Do you support (violent) action Z against X, given that this is a measure of last resort?" or "Do you support (violent) action Z against X, given that X is an imminent danger?" Sure, not all questions may be that easy to classify. However, we have to try to summarise the information in as NPOV a way as possible, and unless we just list (quote) all the exact questions asked, we need some way of compacting the info. i also don't understand how this would go in a criticism section - the masses of people interviewed and statistically corrected based on their demographic profiles are not experts on whether military action should or should not be carried out against Iran, but they are experts on what their opinions about the issue are, and popular opinion is a type of fact, even though it's difficult to measure. Boud (talk) 02:22, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

As for "screed", the present version of the article has 46 references cited to source the various claimed facts. Boud (talk) 02:22, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Whole article is Original research

This whole article is a hodgepodge of people opposed to some kind of military action in Iran mated with a hodgepodge of reasons why military action might happen. Crystal ball issues aside, the article's title and very nature make it nothing more than a dumping ground for theoretical Iranian war commentary. Bonewah (talk) 15:08, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

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