Talk:Hossein Fatemi

anon complaint
This article is not only biased but factually incorrect and incomplete. I would have it reviewed by a true historian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.85.114.166 (talk) 17:12, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

recent edits
Problem with recent Jan. 4 2010 edits by Kurdo. They insert the following text:

"In the aftermath of the first coup attempt, while Mossadegh still remained a strong proponent of constitutional monarchy, Fatemi had advised Mossadeq to declare a republic in light of 'Shah's treason' and collaboration with foreigners." But if you look at the source -- Tortured confessions: prisons and public recantations in modern Iran - Page 99, Ervand Abrahamian here -- there's nothing about Fatemi talking about the "Shah's treason". Instead it says Fatemi had called the shah a "venomous serpent."

"He had advised Mosaddeq 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.`" This is inaccurate and misleading. --BoogaLouie (talk) 01:57, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, there are problems with Kurdo777's changes in these nine edits following my expansion of the article. As can be seen in the diff, every instance of Darioush Bayandor being cited was removed, including the relevant sentence, "He advised Mosaddegh on repressive measures to stifle opposition voices, such as recommending the closure of certain newspapers." The simple sentence "He was executed for treason against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi" was changed to "In the aftermatch of the 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup, he was executed by a firing squad, by the order of the coup government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi." Ignoring the misspelling of aftermath, the change gets rid of the state's conviction of treason, executing Fatemi for no apparent reason, and it asserts that some kind of "coup government" did the deed rather than the legitimate government of Iran, which was the case. The source is quoted, which is the astonishing part, and it says, "Fatemi was convicted of treason and executed in 1954." How much simpler can a source be?
 * Furthermore, Kurdo777 inserts "Pahlavi dynasty" for "Iranian monarch Rezā Shāh" when the time frame and the sources indicate that Rezā Shāh is the target for Fatemi's criticism. Fatemi could not have been criticizing the whole dynasty in the 1940s when the father Rezā Shāh was the only such person to target. Kurdo777's changes restored the phrase Divan Balkh which I had taken out as uncited and missing from reliable sources. Kurdo777 cites the book by Nasrin Alavi but that book has nothing at all about "Divan Balkh" in it. Binksternet (talk) 02:32, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * According to Wikipedia policies, Claims must be based upon independent reliable sources. It's obvious Bayandor is not an independent source.--Aliwiki (talk) 03:13, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * No, it is not obvious. Show me a source saying Bayandor is not independent. As far as I can tell, Bayandor had no part at all in the 1953 Iran coup, no part at all in relation to Hossein Fatemi. I can find no source which ties the men together to make Bayandor less than independent. Looking forward to seeing proof of your assertion. Binksternet (talk) 03:38, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I am returning the word 'treason' to the lead paragraph because that is the official conviction, per the cited source. I am removing "coup government" and "Divan Balkh" from the article: "coup government" is a POV construct which attempts to make the Iran government into an illegitimate body. "Divan Balkh" is a phrase not found at all in the cited source. Binksternet (talk) 04:18, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia policy of independency declares: An independent source is a source that has no significant connection to the subject and therefore describes it from a disinterested perspective.--Aliwiki (talk) 04:23, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Exactly, which is why I think Bayandor is a fine source. He is not connected to Fatemi, and he had no part in the 1953 Iran coup. I was not able to find anybody saying Bayandor was not independent of Fatemi, were you more successful? Binksternet (talk) 04:35, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The subject here is not just Fatemi, it's shah, it's his regime that came to power by the 1953 coup. Bayndor is therefore connected to the subject. Kurdo777 (talk) 07:12, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Preposterous! Bayandor was not around at the time. He worked for the Shah in the 1970s. In the 1950s he was a boy in school, not involved at all. Binksternet (talk) 14:23, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

To Booga, Shah's treason comes from Fatemi's famous speech "the Shah has been a traitor,". That sums up Fatemi's attack on Shah, the rest is just a a matter of vocabulary. Kurdo777 (talk) 07:07, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Kurdo777, in this edit you include the edit summary "Lead should be kept simple." However, you change a simple, straightforward lead paragraph sentence to be a complex one, taking away the treason conviction against the Shah and substituting it with describing the method of execution, and supplying the date and time, when the date of death was already in the lead sentence. Abrahamian wrote that Fatemi was convicted of plotting to overthrow the monarchy. Of course the common name for that is 'treason', but if you wanted to replace the word 'treason' with "plotting to overthrow..." etc., why did you not do this? Why did you take out any kind of conviction, so that the reader is left wondering why Fatemi was executed? This cannnot stand. The reader must be told why the execution was carried out. Binksternet (talk) 14:23, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Readers can read all those details in the body of the article. Lead should be kept simple. I didn't put tortured in the lead either. If the lead is to expanded to include all these little details, then we can also talk about Shah's personal vendetta against Fatemi, or how he was repeatedly beaten and stabbed while in coup government's custody. A military dictatorship's "official charges" for killing someone, is not as significant as you may assume. For example, Nematollah Nassiri's article makes no mention of what the official charges against him were. Kurdo777 (talk) 19:20, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't undertand. If we have a WP:RS saying why Nematollah Nassiri or anyone else was executed it should be in their article. If we have a WP:RS saying the trial was summary and violated the prisoner's rights to due process that should be mentioned too. What we should not have is an article carefully cleansed of anything that might make the Shah's execution of Fatemi seem at all defensable, such as Fatemi saying the shah was a `venomous serpent,` or that "The Baghdad fugitive [i.e. the shah belongs on the scaffold."] --BoogaLouie (talk) 19:38, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Aliwiki, you keep repeating that Bayandor is not an independent source. Is he an employee of the Shah's regime (as opposed to was one 20+ years ago)? When he was an employee 20+ years ago was he in the Shah's inner circle? Was he an employee during the coup? Is he writing for a publication funded by Iranian royalists? In what sense is he not independent? --BoogaLouie (talk) 19:42, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You missed my point. We're talking about the lead, not the article. By the way, you are welcome to justify this or any other execution on your blog, not here. Wikipedia is not a place for soapboxing. Not to mention that your suggestion that Fatemi's execution was somehow justified because he called the Shah a sneak, violates WP:SYNTH. Farokhzad used to call Kheomini a "pedophile", "a blood thirty Zahak" and many other names, on daily basis, does that mean Khomeini was "justified" brutally murdering him? This is an absurd argument. Kurdo777 (talk) 19:54, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Kurdo777, this article here does not need to follow in the same perhaps mistaken style of any other article on Wikipedia; it needs to follow the guidelines and common sense. Per WP:LEAD, the lead section serves as a summary of the article's most important aspects. The lead section should not hint at information or tease the reader—it should describe a complete but brief picture of the topic. Leaving out the conviction teases the reader who questions why Fatemi was executed.
 * The reliable sources already justify the execution of Fatemi by supplying information about his trial and conviction, by talking about his mid-August editorials and the 16 August public speech against the Shah. Nobody here is suggesting an attempt at original research or synthesis—the connection is made crystal clear in the sources. Binksternet (talk) 19:56, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Kurdo do not misrepresent what I'm saying, namely relevent sourced facts should not be excluded from the article because they might make the executions look defensable --BoogaLouie (talk) 19:58, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * To BoogaLouie, nothing of any significance and due weight, has been excluded. To Binksternet, since you think this is importnat, I've added "for treason against Shah" to the lead, but I have also added Military court and tortured. It's all or nothing. We either keep the lead simple, or we include all the main points. You can't have it both ways. Kurdo777 (talk) 20:11, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Both ways? Who are you talking to? I have not participated in a conversation about bringing "military court" and "tortured" into the lead. I have not said anything about those terms, positive or negative, so your saying "you cannot have it both ways" makes no sense at all. All I was concerned about was the conviction which you had earlier removed. Binksternet (talk) 21:10, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * User BoogaLouie, Wikipedia policy of independency adds: A third-party source is independent and unaffiliated with the subject.--Aliwiki (talk) 23:01, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Exactly, which means Bayandor is a fine source. He was just a boy in school when the coup happened—he cannot be affiliated with the subject. Binksternet (talk) 04:59, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Osama bin Laden was drinking tea in Tora Bora cave when September 11 attack occurred. Ahmadinejad was a simple university professor of Traffic engineering in that time as-well, and few months ago he claimed most people believe it was just a plot by U.S. .--Aliwiki (talk) 11:46, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That argument makes no sense to me. Binksternet (talk) 15:46, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think he means that by your logic on what is "independent of subject", someone like Ahmdinejad would be independent sources on US topics. "Third-party independent sources" means being independent from the larger topic at hand, which Bayondor is not. Kurdo777 (talk) 19:03, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Bayandor is certainly independent of the topic of the biography of Hossein Fatemi, and the facts in his book about the 1953 Iran coup have been peer-reviewed by Gasiorowski and Abrahamian, among others. Binksternet (talk) 03:57, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Tag: Disputed
I've added a tag Disputed .... because the article is so bad. --BoogaLouie (talk) 20:02, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * This is is a misuse of the tag. There is nothing in the article that's factually inaccurate. I am removing the tag. Kurdo777 (talk) 20:05, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Bias and bad writing
I'm going to give a tag to the article and give my reasons here:

First off, the Hossein Fatemi section is confusing. "In August 1953, Mossadegh's government was overthrown by a CIA-orchestrated coup d'état. On 14 August, Fatemi was to be arrested along with Mosaddegh and other close associates, but the first U.S.-led coup attempt failed. Fatemi was arrested by Shah's guards in such a hurry that he was not allowed to put shoes on, but he was released on the morning of the 15th and went directly to Mosaddegh's residence."

He was arrested but the coup failed. What happened? Was he arrested and then released? Historical accounts say that Imperial Guard Colonel Nematollah Nassiri tried to arrest Mosaddeq but the latter was waiting for him and it was Nassiri who was arrested. Which would make the statement "Fatemi was to be arrested along with Mosaddegh" untrue.

Another sentence leaves out a lot of rather relevant details: "In the aftermath of the first coup attempt, while Mossadegh still remained a strong proponent of constitutional monarchy, Fatemi had advised Mossadeq to declare a republic in light of 'Shah's treason' and collaboration with foreigners." But Fatemi rather strongly supported opposed the Shah before the coup in general: "before the coup he had openly denounced the Shah as a `venomous serpent.`" ... and after the attempted coup he didn't just want a republic he wanted the shah swinging from a rope: "The Baghdad fugitive belongs on the scaffold." Surely this is as relevent to the story as whether "Fatemi was arrested by Shah's guards in such a hurry that he was not allowed to put shoes on"!! --BoogaLouie (talk) 20:52, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

citations given don't support the text
"Fatemi had advised Mossadeq to declare a republic in light of 'Shah's treason' and collaboration with foreigners." Neither says anything about "collaboration with foreigners" (but uncomplementary stuff about Fatemi that is said -- "violently anti-Shah remarks of Fatemi" were in part "instrumental in persuading the general public that Mossadeq was on the verge of eliminating the monarchy" -- appear nowhere in the article.) --BoogaLouie (talk) 21:44, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

"On 19 August, Fatemi's newspaper was attacked by mobs paid by the CIA, its offices burned down. Later that day the second coup attempt succeeded, with Mosaddegh arrested, and Fatemi going underground. He began to write his memoir, but after 204 days of concealment, he was discovered and arrested. He was tortured and then convicted by a military court on Oct. 10 for 'treason against the Shah' and sentenced to death." The first citation We are Iran mentions Fatemi in one line. Tortured confessions by Ervand Abrahamian, (mentioned before) also makes very brief mention of him. Neither has anything about torture or his newspaper burning down. Search "Fatemi" in U.S. & Soviet policy in the Middle East, 1957-66 google book and you get nothing: "Your search - Fatemi - did not match any documents." --BoogaLouie (talk) 21:58, 5 January 2011 (UTC) Cry for My Revolution, Iran by Manoucher Parvin mentions him several times, but Parvin is a novelist and gives no historical facts.
 * Your proposed tags are inappropriate. The article needs no cleaning. And your arguments about "inaccuracies" are nothing but WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT. The citations do support the text. You are just misinterpreting the sources. "Before the coup" means before the coup that succeed, and after the initial coup attempt. Anything that happened before August 19th is "before the coup". That's already covered in the article. Fatemi started attacking Shah after the initial coup attempt, for what he saw as Shah's treason to his country. An opinion shared by many at that time. Fatemi was a cynic and a tactician, while Mossadegh was passive and trusting by nature. Mossadegh's biggest mistake was not listening to likes of Fatemi, Bakhtiar and Shaygan, to arrest, dismiss, and put on trial all the coup plotters and collaborators for treason. Instead, he cracked down on Tudeh and anti-monarchy rioters. Kurdo777 (talk) 22:12, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * If Fatemi had hunted down and arrested the coup plotters, he would have been blind-sided by the clerics. Binksternet (talk) 22:58, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * let's say you're right about "the coup" being a reference to August 18 not 15. What about the rest? the lack of clarity, the stuff Fatemi said about the shah that you've left out? the crappy citations? --BoogaLouie (talk) 23:51, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Points of difference
Here are the points of difference I have with the article as it was just before my edits today:
 * Fatemi advised Mosaddegh to close down some opposition newspapers. This was taken out of earlier versions. It is in the peer-reviewed scholarly source from Darioush Bayandor and is presented as a fact, not as an opinion. I'm restoring that bit, with different, more neutral wording.
 * "Democratically elected government of Mosaddegh"... the lead section of Fatemi's biography is not the place to argue points of politics that are covered in the 1953 coup article, and there are scholarly sources who say that the way elections were conducted in Iran at the time were not what any Westerner would consider "democratic" today. The point is a sensitive one and should not be argued here on this biography. I'm removing it. All we need to say is "After the 1953 Iranian coup d'état..." Very neutral.
 * "tortured". The best sources do not say absolutely that Fatemi was tortured. Of course, it is likely he was beaten or tortured in prison—his jailers were not the friendly sort—but Abrahamian does not say this in Tortured Confessions. Instead, he 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'." Nothing about torture. Reza Shabani in Iranian History at a Glance does not say "torture". Gholam R. Afkhami does not say torture, he says Fatemi was "severely beaten by a mob as he was taken to prison"... this is not at all the same as "tortured". I am removing the word.
 * "early in the morning"... This fact is an emotional grab at the reader. The execution's timing is not important to the article so I am removing it.
 * "...in light of 'Shah's treason' and collaboration with foreigners"... This phrase is not supported by the cited Abrahamian text, or the Donald Wilber text. This is original research, a validation of Fatemi's advice to Mosaddegh. We are not here to validate Fatemi's life decisions, we are here only to describe.
 * "He was a caustic critic of the ruling Pahlavi Dynasty" vs. "He was a caustic critic of the Iranian monarch Rezā Shāh". The year was 1942 and there was as yet no dynasty involved. The second sentence is the more accurate.
 * "Fatemi was arrested by Shah's guards" vs. "Fatemi was arrested by putschists". On August 15, 1953, Fatemi was arrested, and the next morning he was released. Who arrested him? Donald Wilber says "several officers and a considerable body of soldiers" took Fatemi and drove him to "the guard house of the Imperial Palace (Saadabad) at Shimran." Does Wilber mean that the soldiers were Shah's guards? Or was their destination not directly connected to their military unit? Wilber reports that Fatemi said in his public speech a few days later that "Imperial Guards" had been caught planning a coup, but Fatemi is hardly neutral on the subject. I think "putschists" in its generality is the better choice, or "Imperial Guards" if the military unit is otherwise positively identified. I will use the non-specific "officers and soldiers".
 * "while Mossadegh still remained a strong proponent of constitutional monarchy"... this again is arguing another article here in the Fatemi bio. I don't see this statement in Abrahamian or Afkhami, Wilber or Gasiorowski. In fact, Afkhami says that in this between-coup-attempt time, Mosaddegh ordered the Shah's name to be removed from military garrison prayers nationwide; hardly the act of a contrite monarchist.

I am changing the article, restoring some of my previous expansion and tweaking other aspects to fit the sources. Binksternet (talk) 05:27, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
 * (1) About Bayandor, see the section below.
 * (2) It's relevant information about the nature of the legal and democratic nature of the government that Fatemi defended and served, backed by most scholarly sources.
 * (3) "Tortured" is supported by Parvin, cited later in the article. Military court is also cited and supported in the body of the article.
 * (4) That was Fatemi's point in his editorial, but I removed "collaboration with foreigners" anyways. The rest is supported by Abrahamian.
 * (5) He was both a critic of Shah and his father, that means Pahlavy dynasty. But if it makes you happy, I changed it to Reza Shah. No source cited for this part anyways.
 * (6) That`s fine, as long as the nature of the soldiers and officers arresting Fatemi is clear. At that time, the military was not unified, there were Royalist officers, as well as pro-Mossadegh, and Tudeh officers.
 * (7) Mossadegh remaining a strong proponent of constitutional monarchy at time, is supported by Abrahamian and many other sources. There was a split in National Front in-between the coup, one faction led by Mohammad Mossadegh and Mehdi Bazargan advocated confrontation with Tudeh and defense of constitutional monarchy, while another faction led by Hosein Fatemi and Shapur Bakhtiar advocated confrontation with Shah, monarchists and coup-plotters. This is supported by many reliable sources. Afkhami`s claims about Mossadegh are irrelevant, he is not an independent source. Kurdo777 (talk) 07:04, 9 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The word "tortured" cannot be included based on Parvin, who mentions in passing that Fatemi was tortured; this during a fugue-state imagining of what was going through the Shah's mind while he was helicoptering over 1979 revolutionaries. It's a well-written fantasy, not a reliable source for an encyclopedia. Binksternet (talk) 19:20, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I have removed the word "tortured" as there is no reliable source for it. Binksternet (talk) 16:59, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I restored some of the fatal quotes from Fatemi, ones that angered the Shah and led to Fatemi's arrest and execution. Cited sources are Wilber and Abrahamian. Also, Wilber makes the important point that Fatemi led the Iranian people to the conclusion that Mosaddegh was getting rid of the Shah. Binksternet (talk) 04:27, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The speech and editorial in question are already covered in a WP:NPOV and due fashion. Wikipedia is no place for sensationalism, and selective quoting which violate WP:Cherry and WP:SYNTH. Your selected quotes from Fatemi, are out of context, and appear to serve no purpose other than pushing a certain POV that Fatemi was essentially "asking for it" . Despite that, I kept ""venomous serpent" which comes from an independent academic source. But Donald Wilber who was an American spy and one of the architects of 1953 coup, is not an independent WP:RS for this topic, and therefore can not be cited for any claims on this article or any other related topics. Kurdo777 (talk) 05:30, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Not in the slightest, no. Wilber thought the quotes were very important to the story. Abrahamian thought the quotes were very important to the story. We should allow Wilber and Abrahamian to select quotes based on their expertise, or are you placing yourself in a higher position than they hold? Regarding your accusation of POV, Cherry and Synth, I say malarkey: reliable sources set these quotes as important. It is not me who is pushing a point of view, it is you. You are trying to make it appear as if Fatemi was saying reasonable things to the crowd when in fact he was inciting them to action against the Shah.
 * Wilber is quoted extensively at the 1953 Iranian coup d'état article—he is a perfectly good source regarding Fatemi. Wilber thinks that these additional "violent" quotes are CRUCIAL to why Fatemi was arrested and executed. Do you think Wilber is wrong? Binksternet (talk) 05:43, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I was editing my comment, when you posted your reply. Read my comment again, now that's been updated. I have kept Abrahmian's quote and he is a respected academic and historian. But Donald Wilber is the man behind the coup which led to Fatemi's killing, he can not be used on this topic for claims blaming the coup and Fatemi's execution on "Fatemi's violent words". He is an involved party in all this, and certainly not an independent source on this topic. You don't have to take my word on it, go ahead and start a RFC on this, I am confident others will tell you the same thing. Kurdo777 (talk) 05:57, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * As for Wilber being "quoted extensively at the 1953 Iranian coup d'état". He is a public figure, so he can be quoted through other secondary sources, which is what I suspect is the case on that page. But his book can not cited to support a "fact", as sources used should be independent. Kurdo777 (talk) 06:03, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Apparently you see no fault in defending the CIA's primary version of events as you did at Talk:1953 Iranian coup d'état and Talk:1953 Iranian coup d'état, while declining to accept Dr. Wilber's version taken from his 2005 book. The "gallows" bit is not something that Wilber dreamed up; it is a fact reported by Wilber and supported by Dean L. Dodge, the CIA's historical officer, in 1969. Others reported it in news items of the day: in article in Time magazine in August 1953 reported Fatemi saying To the gallows' with the young Shah." The New York Times reported Fatemi saying gallows", and specifically, Kennett Love's report gave the detail that Fatemi said of the Shah "that the Iranian nation 'is thirsty for revenge and wants to see you on the gallows'." Stephen Kinzer puts the "drag you from behind your desk to the gallows" quote in his 2008 edition of All The Shah's Men, on page 194, upholding Wilber's version. All of these writers considered the 'gallows' quote important, but you wish to remove it as a cherry-picked item, as sensationalist. I think it is critical: the point of the quote is that Fatemi called for the Shah's death, so when the Shah was deciding his fate (through a military court which would follow his wishes), the public call for his death sealed the deal. The Shah would have to act with finality or appear weak: Fatemi must be executed. Binksternet (talk) 16:16, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Like Wilber, Mark Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne consider Fatemi's fiery public speech on 17 August, the one calling for the Shah's abdication, a factor in "fueling the growing chaos" which catalyzed the crowd and resulted in street riots going against Mosaddegh. Byrne and Gasiorowski write that Fatemi's speech and editorials "indicated that at least for some Mosaddeqists the shah's reign, if not his dynasty or the monarchy itself, had come to an end." Wilber says much the same thing. Binksternet (talk) 16:40, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Darioush Bayandor, not an appropriate source for 1953-related articles
Darioush Bayandor is not an an appropriate source for 1953-related articles, including this one. Some call him a fringe source enraged in Historical revisionism (negationism), some have questioned his independence and reliability as a source , while others have simply said that giving any weight to his controversial views, violates WP:UNDUE. What's clear though, is that there is a community consensus of at least 8 different editors that Bayandor is not an appropriate source for these topics. Kurdo777 (talk) 06:19, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Newspaper burned down
Fatemi's newspaper was burned down 19 August 1953, we all agree. The New York Times printed a story by James Risen which said that the leader of the street mob was an Iranian CIA agent, a journalist "without specific orders" was the one who incited a crowd to burn down Fatemi's newspaper office. I wrote "acting on his own initiative" so that I would stay true to "without specific orders" while following the requirement not to violate copyright. The meaning is the same. With no specific orders to burn down Fatemi's newspaper, the agent was acting on his own initiative when he decided to do so. This removal by Kurdo777 was unneeded, and the edit summary, "could not be found in the cited source" is wrong. Binksternet (talk) 19:08, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Torture per Moaddel
This addition to the article reverted my removal of the word "tortured", giving it a new source from Mansoor Moaddel's 1986 book A sociological analysis of the Iranian Revolution, Volume 1. I see no such assertion from Moaddel, so I am tagging the supposed citation as unverified. Binksternet (talk) 19:08, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * "The more militant members of the National Front, such as Hosein Fatemi, were tortured and killed in Prison" . Professor Masoud Kazemzadeh also says that they "raped Dr. Fatemi's wife in front of his eyes". Kurdo777 (talk) 19:28, 16 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Odd question: I wonder why you accept Kazemzadeh who holds that Shi'a clerics had a strong hand in the 1953 coup, but you do not like Bayandor who holds that Shi'a clerics had a strong hand in the 1953 coup. Binksternet (talk) 20:19, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * First of all, I have no problem with, and actually agree with, the assertion that certain politically-active reactionary clerics like Kashani played a role in the 1953 coup. The keyword being "a role". That said, Bayndor and Kazemzadeh are actually similar cases when it comes partisanship, from opposite sides of the spectrum that is. Although, unlike Bayondor who worked for Shah, Kazemzadeh never worked for Mossadegh. But I would still argue that Kazemzadeh, having been an active member of the National Front in later years, is not an independent source on these topics either, which is why I did not cite him on this article. Kurdo777 (talk) 21:17, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Legacy section clarity
I did a copyedit on the Legacy section, but it could use a look from someone familiar with the topic. In the second half of the paragraph, it's not clear to me whether it's meant to read that the other Persian Gulf countries were following Fatemi's example or the Shah's. Eric talk 17:35, 4 November 2012 (UTC)