Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Soviet support for Iran during the Iran-Iraq war

Suggested name change to The Soviet Union and the Iran-Iraq War
If this was being done in isolation, that makes perfectly good sense. Unfortunately, this is part of a series of articles (see User:Hcberkowitz, which need, for other countries, to show the involvement of that country in both sides. I drafted this article, and should not have put it out early -- I can only plead I was working on several articles and wasn't thinking well enough.

I agree completely that any Soviet support to Iran was far less than its support for Iraq. Still, I am not convinced there was no support whatsoever by the Soviet Union, if only to have an opportunity for future engagement with Iran. If I have a POV, it is that a very large number of countries, not one or three, provided support to one or both sides. The United States did some stupid and even criminal things, but it wasn't fighting alongside Iraqi troops, and those Iraqi troops were not driving US tanks and flying US aircraft.

The whole war had the oddity that the side that the US most supported primarily used French and Russian weapons, while the other side primarily used US weapons. It is the feeling of several editors, who have worked with Iran-Iraq for a while, that the effort of country/support for Iran and country/support for Iraq articles is the only way to approach NPOV for Iran-Iraq.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 18:09, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I see no purpose in this series of articles and I don't see why content on Wikipedia should be tailored to the demands of a POV war and not to the most logical and objective way of presenting the material. I am working on The Soviet Union and the Iran-Iraq War here . So far I have referenced it to one reliable source and I have read and will add others. I think this is a far more sensible way of presenting Soviet policy with regards to Iran and Iraq during the 1980-88 war. --Folantin (talk) 18:30, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Howard, I believe Folantin has a valid point here, wikipedia should be based on logic and not on POV wars. I believe the same argument goes for U.S. support for Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Imad marie (talk) 19:30, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * If you have disagreements with other editors, you can always turn to WP:DR. Imad marie (talk) 20:04, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Let's assume that we agree that a given country's support to either or both should be in one article. There actually are some benefits to that, such as only having the export policy in one place. Is there still a disagreement with having country-specific articles? Folantin, have you looked at Soviet support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war? Are there things there that would be appropriate to your article?


 * Imad Marie (and Folantin if you have ideas), I would be delighted to find a way to progress this overall article. When there are edit wars over things as minor as a flag in an infobox, I despair of ever getting out of the POV battles. It's not atypical that one individual has sent multiple complaints to me today.


 * Is there a value to having country-specific subarticles, whether they deal with support to one country per subarticle, or a combined article? I think the information is useful, and, in an ideal Wikiworld, indeed, one article per country should work.


 * How do we deal with POV wars? There have been a few 3RR blocks. Is it remotely possible that mediation could work? The WikiProject Sri Lanka Reconciliation‎ and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sri Lanka Reconciliation‎ pages could well be a model when there is good will -- and even there, they are trying to improve their dispute resolution. While there are editors that will react immediately to a suggestion of POV, they also tend to assume good faith, and it's quite common for other editors to mediate informally. (Unsigned comment by Howard C. Berkowitz)


 * I support the article/country suggestion. Like: U.S. involvement in the Iran-Iraq war and Soviet involvement in the Iran-Iraq war. And if we have POV wars then we can always turn to WP:DR which was successful in resolving more complex disputes. Imad marie (talk) 20:18, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree that the POV war is a separate issue. It should be dealt with by Wikipedia processes and shouldn't affect our content. I haven't been involved in the Iran-Iraq War talk page disputes and I think that gives me a certain objectivity here. After reading up on this topic I think either The Soviet Union and the Iran-Iraq War or Soviet involvement in the Iran-Iraq War would be the best title under which to deal with this subject. --Folantin (talk) 20:24, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * (Sidenote: it looks like a lot of this Iran-Iraq War kerfuffle has been caused by an infobox. Now there's a surprise. In my opinion, the guy who invented infoboxes should be taken out and shot at dawn. If you can't have a NPOV infobox, then get rid of the box. Simple as that). --Folantin (talk) 21:18, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * May I offer ammunition? Thorough gun cleaning afterwards? Champagne? Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 00:38, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd supportSoviet involvement in the Iran-Iraq War and similar titles. Direct, clear, no POV in the title. What's likely to be in the article is, as, mentioned, another problem. DGG (talk) 21:39, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi DGG,


 * The problem with this title is that POV editors will aggressively delete all data within the article which contradicts their POV. This is harder to do when you have a pair of articles, one of which is Country X to side A and Country X to side B.  POV editors will typically want to paint a picture of Country X as supporting side A only, aggressively obscuring the case where Country X has relations and goals for sides A and B.


 * Thanks,
 * Erxnmedia (talk) 22:00, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd supportSoviet involvement in the Iran-Iraq War and similar titles. Direct, clear, no POV in the title. What's likely to be in the article is, as, mentioned, another problem. DGG (talk) 21:39, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Erxnmedia, I suggest inviting the editors who are likely to object to the new titles to this discussion. Imad marie (talk) 05:41, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * "The problem with this title is that POV editors will aggressively delete all data within the article which contradicts their POV". We aren't here to accommodate POV-pushers. We're here to provide a summary of the facts which is as clear and objective as possible for our general readership. If we can't do that then Wikipedia is bust. I've just read four or five reliable sources on Soviet policy towards the Iran-Iraq War and the basic outline they give of events is the same. I've edited my article accordingly and the basic version is now ready. Of course there is room for improvement - especially if anyone wants to add specific details of the military hardware the USSR provided to Iraq or discuss the Soviet attempt to describe the Iran-Iraq War in terms of Marxist-Leninist ideology (frankly, I'll pass on that last one) - but I don't think it's too bad. Incidentally, The Soviet Union and the Iran-Iraq War is the most neutral title possible since, officially at least, the Soviets claimed they were strictly neutral. --Folantin (talk) 11:40, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Update I've moved The Soviet Union and the Iran-Iraq War article into mainspace as an experiment. --Folantin (talk) 12:01, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * If the "Soviets claimed they were strictly neutral" at some point in some forum, what does that have to do with anything? This is an encyclopedia of verifiable facts, not a channel for reprint of old public relations bulletins. Countries do not always do what they say they are doing.  Erxnmedia (talk) 12:10, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Your point being what? I really don't understand. It's a fact the Soviets claimed they were neutral, so that needs to be in the article (as is the reality that they weren't in practice). In any case, this is irrelevant. I took the title from two of my sources, which have chapter headings on ""The USSR and the Iran-Iraq War" and "The USSR and the War". --Folantin (talk) 12:18, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Two points: (1) If you write an article assuming that country X is neutral because they say they are, you're automatically starting off on the wrong foot, and (2) We have a lot of Iranian editors with strong POV, and experience so far is that the only way to neutrally present an issue where some very aggressive editors insist that everything is all A and no B, is not to start an article on A and B, because they will insistently color it in until it is all A; the practical solution is to start articles "support for A" and "support for B", and then it is more obvious when the aggressive editors try to scratch out everything in the "support for B" article.  I have a number of examples of this:  (a) U.S. support for Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, which sends some people into a tizzy; (b) the fact that the Iran article, covering 7,000 years of history, features a picture of Donald Rumsfeld meeting Saddam Hussein in Iraq; (c) the ongoing fierce argument about whether to label the article Human rights in Iran as Human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran -- which automatically tilts the article towards present-day issues and thus highly underweights the horrific abuses in the prior years of the Pahlavi era -- which tilt suits some editors for whatever political reason -- or to add a separate article Human rights in the Pahlavi Dynasty -- which gives a place for putting in facts about the prior regime, which are of no interest to the politically-driven goals of the highly POV and highly aggressive editors that are hitting these articles; (d) Someone else (you?) mentioned the Macedonian/Romanian/Kosovo/Serbia articles which have their own version of this kind of tussle.


 * In other words: You are not taking into account the prior history of these articles, and the extreme difficulty of achieving any kind of balanced, dispassionate, fact-based, NPOV presentation when people are using Wikipedia to do agitprop, largely because certain editors are extremely aggressive about bending how the question is posed, into a form more like "Have you beaten your wife lately?" rather than "Please describe your relationship with your wife". This is why they go crazy over flags in infoboxes and over whether an article that covers all of the history of Iran should be headed "Islamic Republic of Iran".


 * Erxnmedia (talk) 13:48, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * "If you write an article assuming that country X is neutral because they say they are, you're automatically starting off on the wrong foot". Except I don't and I haven't. The evidence is the Soviets tried to be friends with both Iraq and Iran'' for the first two years of the war then turned decisively in favour of Iraq from 1982 (while still officially claiming they were neutral).


 * I have long experience with various POV wars and warriors on Wikipedia. The best way to deal with them is to ignore them, go and find some reliable sources, read what they say and use them to create referenced content in accordance with Wikipedia policy. This is what I have done with this new article.


 * "the fact that the Iran article, covering 7,000 years of history, features a picture of Donald Rumsfeld meeting Saddam Hussein in Iraq". I've made the same comment myself. This is a clear case of undue weight. --Folantin (talk) 14:06, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I might observe that an article on the George H.W. Bush Administration, covering 7+ years of history, if it featured a picture of Donald Rumsfeld, might be undue weight. :-) (yes, I know, Bush 43 was not president at the time of the picture) Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:46, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this is a direction...
Understand that my experience has been dealing with things like infobox wars, the evil intent of the United States (I'm not suggesting it was angelic), and countries, such as Italy, which indeed provided lethal things to both sides.

Assume that there is a single article on Soviet involvement. How would people see that as interacting with other country articles, especially for countries that had significant involvement with both belligerents, usually more one than the other? I'm not trying to look for POV trouble, but if there is a single, well-developed Soviet article, it does establish that the US was not the only supporter of Iraq. If that point can be established, logically, a lot of the finger-pointing goes away.

There aren't so many country specific articles that a merger would be a huge job. One reason that some are still in my userspace, such as West Germany, is that some specific transactions are so incredibly complex.

Thoughts? I'm not trying to address any specific Soviet issues at this point, but trying to see if there's a reasonable structural alternative. It's certainly easier to manage 30 than 60 articles.

Balancing rationality and the rarely avoidable POV, at least in articles inherently about conflict, is one of the things Wikipedia really has to solve in order to scale and stay viable. Look at both WikiProject Sri Lanka Reconciliation‎ and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sri Lanka Reconciliation‎ for the best example I've seen. Somewhat to my surprise,the 300K-plus Central Intelligence Agency page, as it was around last October, weathered several edit wars, and the sub-page model seems to be reducing much of the storm and fury. Some of the subpages are growing large enough to need their own article, but that's no real problem when the material is already in a structure of either geographical or functional article. The geographical regions break into sub-regions (where there may be discussion of regional issues), then country (again where there may be generic discussion), then year, and, where possible, headings such as "clandestine intelligence collection", "covert action", "intelligence analysis," etc.

I hope no one minds that I am hoping that some general approaches come out of this.

Possible experiment
Folantin and I have been discussing the possibility of trying a single (i.e., Iran and Iraq) article specifically for the Soviet Union. An area where I think we were using words differently is that I use "support" for even minor involvement, where he saw the Soviet initiatives toward Iran as attempts to establish a friendly relationship (paraphrasing), which did not rise to the level of "support". I agree that the Soviet support to Iraq was immensely greater than its initiatives or support to Iran.

If we did this, the tentative approach would be to take his material on Soviet policy on Iran, his or possibly also some of my material on policy toward Iraq, and my material on the specific military aspects. Export control policy, where the Soviets are different than most other countries, also could be covered.

Balancing between the desire to get an excellent and objective articles, and due regard for the POV issues, we could try this approach for the Soviet Union, and perhaps the two-article approach for Singapore and others that essentially supported either or both sides for commercial reasons. Again putting POV aside, there may be other special cases, such as was suggested by a British Wikicolleague with expertise in relevant matters. He suggested that British support for Iraq alone might justify two articles, one on the overt or implicit exports permitted by te British government, and one on the clandestine Iraqi acquiring control of existing British companies or setting up shell companies. The latter actually could extend to the Iraqi procurement methods, bypassing embargoes, that involved several countries.

Comments? Ernxmedia extended the country list/tables from my userspace into the main Iran-Iraq war article. I moved that material to Talk:Iran-Iraq War, if for no other reason than the active discussion here, which may lead to a better way, in general, of handling country-specific material. There are drafts of some of those in my userspace, others no more than stubs, and others as placeholders. Since some good ideas about the general way of representing county support (with due regard to there being various views of what "support" means) are going on here, it seemed premature to commit such a table to the main article. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 17:13, 8 April 2008 (UTC)