Talk:Nuclear program of Iran/Archive 5

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Why keep making excuses for Iran?

A certain IP editor seems determined to represent Iran's position rather than a balanced representation of the facts. Most recently, my factual summary of the latest IAEA report was edited to include every possible reference that might be considered exculpatory. Anyone reading the report can see that it is overwhelmingly negative toward Iran, yet the summary now suggests a glass half full. While the references are not incorrect, they convey an inaccurate impression. Someone is going to an awful lot of effort to do this.

One suggestion: if there are questions about edits, let's discuss them on the discussion page and not in the summary of changes. There were several responses to my summaries that were not actual summaries of the changes made by the IP editor. This is not how editors should behave. NPguy (talk) 03:35, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

As there are multiple IP editors, I am not sure which user you specifically mean. Generally speaking, the article is entitled "Nuclear program of Iran", so a significant Iranian perspective would most certainly be one of the well-sourced perspectives presented.

If the edit being referred to is the edit, "you - →claiming: something is false doesn't mean it is false. especially when multiple reliable sources say exactly the opposite" then it would be in response to edit summmaries claiming "This is also false, possibly a misquote. Iran would have to do one of those three things, not all three" and "delete false statement". If this is the case, then the latter edits shouldn't remove something on the claim that it is false when disputing sources are not at all provided and when multiple supporting reliable sources are provided. Something isn't false just because an editors claims, wants, or believes it to be false. It is debated when multiple reliable sources question the veracity of the claim, such as claims of doom focusing around Iranian breakout capabilities which are questioned in different ways by multiple experts.

So, if something has been published in multiple reliable sources, it shouldn't be removed by an "expert" solely on theirs assertions or beliefs, which multiple reliable sources disagree with them on. Perhaps the expert could bring their concerns (and hopefully sources) to the discussion page first.--99.130.160.222 (talk) 13:09, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

On another thought, a certain registered editor has had a habit of claiming sourced material is false[1][2]. Is there any evidence at all to support these claims? If not, why is there a habitual removal of well-sourced material on the unsupported claim it is false?--99.130.160.222 (talk) 13:26, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

It would be helpful to summarize here the substance of the issue being disputed. I recall, for example, deleting the statement that 90% enriched uranium is required to make a nuclear weapon, which cited an article in Tehran Times. The claim is false and the source is not reliable. I think it reflects poorly on the original editor who inserted this statement that he/she didn't know it was false. It in no way reflects poorly on me that I did. NPguy (talk) 04:00, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

The statement is included in multiple sources, including Fox, CBS, Federation of American Scientists, IISS, etc. You haven't justified your claim once, but you must be pulling one over on all these people. The burden is on you. And making claims, whether right or wrong, does not give you the right to remove material. So you still haven't justified your claim.--99.130.160.222 (talk) 04:26, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd still be happy if you could justify your claim. If not, your constant removal of sourced material is going to lack much, if any, credibility. Your other edits appear to be fairly constructive.--99.130.160.222 04:54, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Enriched uranium can be used for a nuclear weapon if it has a practically finite critical mass. The threshold for high-enriched uranium is 20%, roughly the point at which the critical mass becomes impractically large (750 kgs - without a reflector). The bare critical mass of pure -235 is just under 50 kg (15 kgs with a reflector). The critical mass varies smoothly with enrichment and remains relatively low even at 50% enrichment. See figure 2 of this NTI fact sheet.

Iran would obviously still be below the needed concentration, as the source points out

Most nuclear power plants use uranium fuel enriched to about 3–5 %. This material cannot be used for nuclear explosives.

The source also says that nuclear weapons not made from WEU are fairly rare, and this is consistent with all of the other sources. If you wish to add a disclaimer about the percentage varying this is fine, but your removal still seems unjustified as there are plenty of other options besides removal.--99.130.160.222 (talk) 04:26, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Anyways, the wording you switched to is fine now that it is sourced. It would have happened a lot more quickly if you could have just added the source.--76.214.161.60 (talk) 05:51, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

This article is getting more and more incoherent

This article has no coherent structure. The history merges with a discussion of issues and a recitation of various parties' views. And recent edits only reinforce this incoherence. Instead of allowing a brief recitation of facts in one section (a brief summary of the latest IAEA report, for example), editors have insisted on introducing an Iranian viewpoint. The place for that is elsewhere in the article. Editors should try to make the article more - not less- coherent. That involves separating fact from opinion and organizing opinions in single place, rather than repeating the variants of the same argument throughout. NPguy (talk) 04:32, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

It has also become much too long to be useful to most readers. This may not e Wikipedia at its worst, but it's pretty awful. NPguy (talk) 04:34, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Speaking to the February 2009 IAEA report section, the Iranian viewpoint section would generally be for information specific to Iran's viewpoint on its nuclear program in general, not for a response which is this specific. WP:NPOV requires that where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly. In these cases, no viewpoint should be regarded as true and each viewpoint should be attributed to its source so that the reader can decide. Response to an event is usually found directly after an event for relevancy and also provides consistency with style in other articles. For the article in general, a reorganization may help. Specifics would have to be provided and there would have to be a process to make sure information didn't just disappear.

And rather than removing sourced material which you claim is false without providing justification, you should refer to WP:PRESERVE. It advises you should rephrase or correct the inaccuracy while keeping the content, move the text within an article or to another article, add more of what you think is important to make an article more balanced (providing sources), request a citation by adding the tag, or discuss the material on the article's talk page in order to come to a consensus. I haven't blanketly removed some of your unsourced material, so I think you could at least make minor changes to sourced material rather than just completely deleting it.

Lastly, if you could provide justification to your claim above that multiply sourced information is false it would be appreciated.--99.130.160.222 (talk) 14:38, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I note that major exceptions to the WP:PRESERVE policy are for information that is irrelevant or redundant. Most of my deletions have been in that category. Before adding something, think about where it belongs and whether it duplicates what's already there. Not everything needs to be stated in every section. NPguy (talk) 03:10, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with duplicate or redundant, but relevancy is obviously highly subjective. It would be much more for you to propose another place for it. Otherwise, it might be argued that the entire U.S. stance, and especially polemic op-eds, on Iran's nuclear program is irrelevant.--99.130.160.222 (talk) 04:15, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Israel's arsenal as related to its views

The reason that I moved the phrase "which is widely believed to possess 100 to 200 nuclear weapons" (regarding to Israel) some lines down, is that to me it seems that putting it completely on top reveals a certain amount of criticism. It reflects something like: "Before we outline anything about what Israel might have to say on Iran, we must remind the reader that this country itself is no moral authority when it comes down to WMD's: they have so much nucleair potential on their own soil". It seems like a warning for the reader, and I think there's no need for that. As we can see, the US is not treated that way; India in the second sentence. We agree that Israel's arsenal is relevant enough to be mentioned somewhere in the concerned section. But not so hasty. Nethency (talk) 19:08, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

It seems information should be presented up front to introduce the reader, but you raise a valid point and there should be some consistency so this seems fine.--76.214.161.60 (talk) 05:58, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Chronological ordering

I had to revert the U.S./European viewpoint section back to the non-chronological version because the new version was very fragmented and hard to understand. Comepletely unrelated events followed each other, and there wasn't much flow. I think putting the section in to chronological order is a wonderful idea, but things would have to be clustered conceptually as well and not just by the date of the source.

I do think this can be done, and it might make more sense to work iteratively from this version instead of from the other.--76.214.161.60 (talk) 16:15, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I won't defend the overall organization of this article, but trying to make that section chronological made no sense at all. In the current structure, some sections of this article are chronological, and others are thematic. The section in question was organized thematically. Putting it in chronological order left it incoherent. Please, don't try it again.NPguy (talk) 22:23, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

A chronological order to themes might make sense, but by source it makes no sense.--76.214.161.60 (talk) 21:13, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Who said this?

In a recent change, one editor added the following:

In March 2009, several senior aides to Barack Obama were linked to a report which warned that Israel might attack Iran within the next two years and which argued for increasing sanctions against Iran. The report warned against any agreement "legitimising even limited [uranium] enrichment on Iranian soil" and also warned that "incremental improvements in the offers to Iran carry the grave risk of feeding Tehran's impression that the longer it waits, the better the offer will be".

I have been unable to get to this FT article, even after trying to register at the FT site. I'd like to know who is being quoted and what they are supposed to have said. Senior aides would to President Obama might include National Security Advisor Jones or WMD "czar" Samore. Dennis Ross is better considered a senior aide to Secretary Clinton. NPguy (talk) 23:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Try clicking the first Google hit here to freely access the article. It's worth noting the report was written by a group and that other officials bring rather different views (Charles Freeman, for example), but it is certainly a view these officials would personally bring with them. Adjusting the wording or noting another view being brought in would seem fine.--76.214.161.60 (talk) 04:15, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

More information about the report from its publisher, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy:

"Preventing a Cascade of Instability: U.S. Engagement to Check Iranian Nuclear Progress" is the report of the Presidential Task Force on Iranian Proliferation, Regional Security, and U.S. Policy, whose endorsers include key Obama administration officials like Robert Einhorn[3], the new undersecretary of state for nonproliferation, and Gary Samore[4], the new NSC "czar" for nonproliferation.

The official report is unreleased as of yet.--76.214.161.60 (talk) 04:25, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

The major concern was to have some material about what the new administration was considering, and some press releases have also accomplished this. I'd leave it to you whether you think the material should stay since it is somewhat speculative in nature. The fact that the State Dept said Iran doesn't need any enrichment and that Europe is pressing for more sanctions would seem to imply the report will mostly be adopted (though talks of an Israeli attack are probably just that, talks).--76.214.161.60 (talk) 05:35, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't see the FT article as a useful interpretation of the primary source - the WINEP report. Samore was not one of its authors, and Einhorn and Ross are listed as having approved an earlier draft. Most of what you've put into that paragraph strikes me as ephemera - somewhat interesting today but of little lasting interest. I would stick to official sources. NPguy (talk) 04:42, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Samore has been listed in press as being a previous endorser before joining the new administration, but this fact doesn't seem the most important to include or dispute to me. I agree with the ephemera sentiment, but I would argue the content should stay while there is not much of an official and public stance being given by the U.S. (until a "policy review" is complete/the U.S. moves forward with negotiations/sanctions/...)--76.214.161.60 (talk) 05:18, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

This article is already way too long and incoherent. I don't think adding ephemera helps. NPguy (talk) 02:51, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

There's some fairly old ephemera which could go too, so perhaps it would make more sense to worry about this first. For example(s), the 2007 NIE could be summarized more and statements about past sanctions or negotiations could be more summarized. It's also not clear that U.S+European and G8 really warrant two separate sections. "The Bush Administration non-proliferation initiative" may belong under the U.S. viewpoint or in its own article.--76.214.161.60 (talk) 12:57, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

You may want to consider a proposal I made last year for how to reorganize this article. I didn't get very far, in part because some people objected to deleting old ephemera. See the topic "This article is a mess" in discussion archive 4. Here's what I proposed (the section numbers have changed since then, but the concept is clear enough):

• Overview (current section 1)
• History
  • Pre-NPT (up to 1972) (mostly current section 2.1)
  • NPT-Revolution (1972-1979) (most of current section 2.2)
  • Revolution to current period (1979-2002) (sections 2.3, 2.4 and some of 2.5)
  • IAEA investigation (2002-2006) (part of 2.5)
  • UNSC period (2006-present) (end of 2.5.1.2, 4.1.1, 5.3.1, 4.1.2)
  • Current activities (section 6)
• Legal issues (these are currently scattered through the history and views sections)
  • IAEA safeguards compliance
  • NPT compliance
  • UN Sanctions
  • Peaceful use rights and the NPT
• Political issues
  • Iran's position (2.5.1.1 and 5.1)
  • Western views
  • EU3+3 (a.k.a P5+1) position (part of 5.3)
  • EU3 position (2.5.1.3 and part of 5.3)
  • U.S. position (part of 5.3)
  • Middle Eastern views (5.2)
  • NAM position (5.4)
• End Matter (references, links)

NPguy (talk) 03:23, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Just for clarification, did you make any proposal about current sections 2.6-2.11? I don't see a section 5.2 or 5.3 in the current article. What about the current section 6? Could you update this a bit and mention speficially what might be removed/added as well? Thanks,--76.214.161.60 (talk) 02:05, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Just a quick note: I don't have time right now, but you might look in the history of the article to see what it looked like in February 2008, when I made the suggestion. NPguy (talk) 21:41, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I did, and I agree with the general sentiment of a reorganization being helpful. But (when you have time) discussion would need to take place with an updated list and brief discussion of what might be added/removed. For example, the list of nuclear facilities in Iran (section 6, currently at least) seems relevant but does not seem to currently be in your proposal.--76.214.161.60 (talk) 14:08, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't expect to have time to focus on this for at least several weeks. The list of nuclear facilities is now a separate article. NPguy (talk) 21:59, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

The point would be a summary of the list of facilities would clearly be relevant to this article so hopefully you wouldn't be proposing removing them. Anyways, I'd be happy to discuss this when you have time to update your proposal.--76.214.161.60 (talk) 01:35, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I just came by and made some changes before reading talk. Naughty. Anyway who cares what people said at some event now that the WINEP report is released and has been ref'd and speaks for itself.

I think the outline abouve from NPguy is pretty good. This whole viewpoints section is a mess and POV, not to mention not up to date. Except Israel needs its own section obviously since it keeps threatening to bomb Iran! I already made it its own section.

If someone wants to create an article called "History of Views on Iran Nuke program" go for it, though making it more organized and less POV would be nice. CarolMooreDC (talk) 16:46, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Could someone please organize the article?

I’ve read the most recent discussion: ‘Who said this?’ (3 March ’09 till 15 March), on organizing the article into something useful for the average reader. Any structuring would be better than, like now, no serious structuring to speak of. The idea of Npguy (7 March) is perhaps not perfect, but a whole lot better than the … mess … we have now. Me I’m not enough an expert on this topic to undertake a reorganization – I gave it a little try though, on March 2nd. Could, please please, one of you experts give a big try on organizing the article?? --Corriebertus (talk) 13:16, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

THERE HAS TO BE REFERENCES TO THE EFFORTS BY THE US TO RESTRICT URANIUM ENRICHMENT, AND THE REACTION OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES TO THAT. OTHERWISE YOURE DEPRIVING THE TRUE CONTEXT OF THE CONFLICT. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.99.165.166 (talk) 22:15, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Npguy rightly said, 27 February ‘09: the article gets too incoherent. 7 March he sort of repeats his remark, and makes a proposal. No one appears fundamentally against his proposal for reorganizing. I don’t object to his proposal either, but I make also another proposal, which looks like this:

• 1. Overview.
• 2. History (facts, and supposed or disputed facts, all together in one chronological line). As soon as certain (supposed) facts are being disputed, or provoke reactions from other states, politicians, scientists, commentators, organizations (IAEA, UN (Security Council), G8, etc.) etcetera: list all those reactions under the related (supposed) fact, in some sort of organized way.
• 3. Views, opinions etcetera on the issue 'nuclear power in Iran' as a whole, not specifically in reaction to one (supposed) fact: organize them like, for example:
  • A. States and governments
  • B. Politicians
  • C. Scientists and commentators
  • D. Organizations (IAEA etc.)

(For each reacting entity or person, give its or his reactions chronological.)

Current chapter 3 (nucl.p. as a political issue) can be moved completely to existing article Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Current chapter 5 obviously should be turned into a separate article. Chapter 6, being very concise now, can stay.

I suggest this: those who object to either Npguy’s or my proposal: come up with a better idea. If after some time (a few weeks at the most) no one has come up with a better idea, that would mean that NPguy as well as I receive the permission to go ahead with his proposed reorganization. Whoever (Npguy, or me, or maybe some better proposal presented here) gets his reorganization ready first, gets the right to put it in place of the existing article, and gets some sort of protected status for his work from the Wikipedia management. --Corriebertus (talk) 14:15, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Please see WP:OWN. "Some sort of protected status for his work from the Wikipedia management"? Most likely not. The brief proposal you gave looks good, but it might still be good to hash out sub-sections as well.--68.251.187.176 (talk) 14:27, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

All right: if Wiki management won’t help to protect hard work, I mean to say this: if someone is going to invest a lot of time into a revision, he should get some support and help afterwards from other discussiants here, who will help protect his work from attempts to destroy it, by people who haven’t taken part in this discussion. ‘Hash out sub-sections’: sorry, I’m not a native speaker, and I’m not sure what you mean. I’m sure that during the process of reorganizing, sub-sections will almost automatically emerge. If you mean to agree on certain sub-sections beforehand, I invite you to come up with your suggestions. I think also, the man/woman who will revise the article, should be mandated, by us discussiants here, to throw away unsourced remarks on disputed topics, as much as he/she deems desirable (like mr 98.99.165.166 suggested, above, 11 April, 22:15). --Corriebertus (talk) 17:08, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Any user can be bold and start the reorganization, I was just suggesting having an idea of the subsections before hand to avoid needless edits. (I agree with the second structure which was proposed in general) If a consensus emerges after the reorganization due to a better article structure then the edits will naturally be protected while if they are lacking then they will naturally be revised. All in all though, the article will be written by a group and not one person. If there is unsourced material, editors should just tag it with {{cn}} or remove it if it has been unsourced for awhile, it seems false, or it is especially disputed.--68.251.187.176 (talk) 02:41, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't the first step be to rename the article to something fair and balanced like "Nuclear Proliferation and Nuclear Weapons Programs in Iran"? Hcobb (talk) 15:03, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Hard to tell if this is in jest.--134.68.77.128 (talk) 16:33, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I guess you're an exchange student at Purdue. You see when an American uses the exact phrase "fair and balanced", what follows isn't. Hcobb (talk) 00:31, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Answering Hcobb: I don’t think renaming the article is a priority now, everyone who wants to find this article in Wikipedia will easily find it now, regardless of its title. The article deals with not only (supposed) proliferation and (supposed) nuclear weapons but with everything relating to nuclear power in Iran.

Apart from reconstruction, which I’ll perhaps be starting soon, I would propose that many of the existing (sub)sections are (much much) too long. Do you agree? A section is well readable for an average reader when its length is somewhere between hundred and three hundred words. Would you agree? (The longest subsection in the actual article is now 2649 words!) Any section longer than a few hundred words should be either: 1) Summarized, 2) Split up into sub-sections, 3) Turned into a new article, leaving a short summary of it in the original article. Do you agree? --Corriebertus (talk) 05:53, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Some information isn't appropriate for the article and should be summarized or restructured, and the sections should obviously be shorter for readability; however, my personal reaction would be on a case-by-case basis (how does it get reorganized and what happens to the information?). A History of viewpoints on Iran's nuclear program was suggested, so maybe this would be a starting point for viewpoint information.

If there is a perception that content is disappearing without discussion, then some editors are bound to feel their toes are being stepped on (see Wikipedia:PRESERVE for suggestions in avoiding this). So if it can be figured out first great, if not it just takes longer to figure out but it can still be done.--68.251.187.176 (talk) 13:15, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree: we should work on a case-by-case basis. Whatever information is going to be removed or given a new place, I’ll be clear about why and where to. In my suggested new structure (see 12 April, 14:15), ‘(History of) viewpoints on Iran’s nucl progr’ will probably be placed in chapter 3 when they seem to comment on Iran’s nuclear program as a whole, and placed in chapter 2 directly under a described (supposed) fact when they seem to be a direct reaction on that. References up and down between these chapters when that would seem desirable.

By the way, I’m happy that mr/mrs 68.251.187.176 placed chapter ‘Restricting enrichment technology’ on page Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. I’ve added a link to that article, under ‘See also’. --Corriebertus (talk) 20:28, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

There are a lot of different history threads here, IAEA, UNSC, Iran, USA and so on. I'd go for a brief history of "Nuclear Programs of Iran", the current known facts, announced plans by Iran, and finish up with the viewpoints of each group as say Iran, UN and agencies, "The West" and the rest. Then push everything else out into splinter articles. Hcobb (talk) 23:38, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

I think, Hcobb’s idea doesn’t really contradict with mine: create a clear picture of the current known facts etc., and create a clear picture of the viewpoints of several important groups. And when it seems expedient, push large stories out into separate articles. We have to start out from the existing article, though. I intend to start at the top of the article, that is to say chapter 2, and try, step by step, to ‘unweave’ the ‘facts’ and the ‘viewpoints’, wherever this seems useful. Perhaps it will appear useful also, to give some ‘viewpoints’ immedeately after certain facts, and give the more general viewpoints in a separate ‘chapter 3’. We’ll see when we get there. I’ve already worked through section 2.2 (the 1970s). For clarity, I had to add little bits of information, like the fact that mr. Baghat is an Iranian professor, and that he made those statements in 2006. I also decided to remove one sentence that was obviously redundant. The procedure I’ve followed in this section may seem a bit ‘overdone’ for such a short section; in later and much longer sections however this procedure will be exactly what we need, to make the article surveyable and useable for any reader. --Corriebertus (talk) 19:52, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

That seems like the right sort of approach. I came here to note, though, that material I moved from Mohamed ElBaradei (as being largely off-topic) was immediately deleted, but it hardly belongs back in the ElBaradei article. Some, maybe most of it isn't really helpful and what's left may duplicate existing material, but I feel someone focusing on the topic should have a look and see if there isn't anything worth rescuing: [5]. cheers Rd232 ^talk 01:54, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I’ll comment later on “seems like the right sort of approach…” from revered Rd232. Firstly now, I suggest to continue the discussion started by Rd232 on that material (Mohamed ElBaradei etc.) in the new section below which I created: Where to put ‘reactions to the IAEA role …’?, because that discussion is not on the topic of this section, which is: reorganizing the article. --Corriebertus (talk) 13:25, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

On 12 April, 14:15 (above in this discussion), I suggested that current chapter 3 (Nuclear power as a political issue) be moved to existing article Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Again looking at that chapter 3, I have a different idea now. This chapter 3 seems to be an attempt to make some (political) ‘point’. Which point I don’t know and don’t want to know, because political speeches of editors shouldn’t be in the Wikipedia. The first sentence (“Iran’s nucl pr started in 1950s and ..”) might be true but should in that case be somewhere in the chapter History. Second sentence (“.. has been controversial”) might be true but should in that case be somewhere in the lead section. Third sentence (“…there have been allegations … pursuing .. nuclear weapons ..”) might be true but should then be somewhere in chapter 4, ‘Views on Iran’s nucl p program’. Anyways, this article is called “Nuclear program of Iran”, so it describes that program, and some relevant comments on it. This speech is not a relevant comment on the Iranian program, and I propose to remove the whole chapter. --Corriebertus (talk) 16:57, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Something is dawning on me. After a long introduction, in sentence eight of chapter 3, mention is being made of a position (a repeated statement) of the IAEA. (Unfortunately without source reference.) We do not yet have a section covering “IAEA’s view on Iran’s nuclear power program”. So let’s change this complete chapter 3 into a new section 4.5: (View of ) IAEA. (The old 4.5 becoming 4.6). Then remove everything out of that new section 4.5 that doesn’t tell us opinions of IAEA – probably some 90%. --Corriebertus (talk) 19:46, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Obviously the Iranian position about its own program would also be included, either in response to the investigation or in a separate section following the IAEA section. Including the U.S. rhetoric provides a context of the IAEA investigation, but it has become slightly outdated and maybe there is a better place for it? I don't know.--68.251.185.77 (talk) 20:52, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Would it be sensible to split out physics (what do they have and what would it take to make a reactor or a bomb), law (what the UN has mandated) and policy? (What people are talking about) Hcobb (talk) 02:03, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Consistent with this and previous discussions, I'd like to separate facts from opinions. Since technical and legal facts are closely linked, I'm not sure it makes sense to separate them. However I think the "opinion" section should be organized around issues, rather than around who holds the opinion. For example, it should deal with whether (and how significantly) Iran violated its safeguards agreement and similarly the NPT in one section. It could deal with the issue of fuel cycle "rights" in a separate section. This might be linked to a section on the legitimacy of UN Security Council action. Finally, there could be a section on alternative proposals to resolve the Iran nuclear issue. All this is a lot of work, which I would love to contribute to but simply don't have the time to do much more than edit. NPguy (talk) 11:19, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

The Bush Administration Non-Proliferation Initiative

I am unsure whether this program is active and how relevant it is specifically to the Iranian program. Is there any parallel with the Proliferation Security Initiative? If so, I believe this should be merged in to that and there should be a brief summary under U.S. views here.--69.208.138.130 (talk) 14:21, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I think most of this section doesn't really belong. I had suggested adding an article on nuclear fuel cycle policy, or a section on fuel cycle policy in the article on Nuclear energy policy, and making the section here a simple cross reference. It remains of some historical interest, because it was part of the Bush Administration's policy response to Iran's nuclear program. It was intended to isolate Iran by providing an alternative to an indigenous enrichment program that other countries embrace. Instead, Iran skillfully used these initiatives to argue that the West was opposed not just to Iran's enrichment program, but was aiming to deny nuclear technology to developing countries. Many took up Iran's side of the "haves" versus "have-nots" debate.

The initiative is loosely related to PSI in that both were Bush Administration nonproliferation initiatives, and both featured prominently in his February 11, 2004 speech at National Defense University "President Announces New Measures to Counter the Threat of WMD" (the first and fourth initiatives). It might make sense for someone to compile an article on actions that followed from that speech, which dominated Bush Administration nonproliferation policy from then on. NPguy (talk) 03:10, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

The section is HIGHLY relevant to Iran's nuclear program because it is the basis and reason for the arguments against Iran's nuclear enrichment program. It is the context.--12.26.54.10 21:18, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

The Bush nonproliferation initiatives are not really the basis for those arguments. They were proposed after Iran's enrichment program came to light in part as an attempt to prevent "future Irans." NPguy (talk) 01:23, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

That's nonsense. The efforts to restrict fuel cycles predates the Bush administration, as the section you've deleted clearly stated. It goes back to 1980. From the Iranian view, this whole controversy is about depriving Iran of an independent nuclear fuel cycle capability, not an anti-proliferation measure. This view is widely shared by other countries, and yet you've decided to totally remove that context from this article even though it was well-cited, supported, and part of Iran's position. Why is that? In short, you've totally removed the fact that Iran;s -- and potentially "other Irans'" nuclear fuel cycles -- are part of a greater North-South conflict.-- 19:58, 7 May 2009 12.26.54.10

We are talking about whether policy initiatives put forward by President Bush in 2004 were basis for opposition to Iran's enrichment program. They couldn't have been, since the opposition predates the policy initiatives. Of course the longstanding U.S. opposition to the spread of enrichment technology was part of the U.S. nonproliferation policy framework, and therefore relevant to Iran. NPguy (talk) 21:31, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Just for some clarity, I was the one who argued for merging this with Proliferation Security Initiative or giving it its own article because it just seemed slightly out of place here. Anyways, I wouldn't object if you readded it or summarized it here, I was just trying to help reorganize the article and didn't see how relevant it would be, especially with a new administration.--99.162.60.191 (talk) 02:36, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

There is a link to the old material here [6] if you would like to do something with it.--99.162.60.191 (talk) 02:48, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

This might fit into an overview article on Bush Administration nonproliferation initiatives, based heavily on the seven initiatives in the Feb 11 2004 speech. PSI is one of those. ENR controls are another. Does such an article exist? NPguy (talk) 10:41, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't see one, and I think I thought its own article was a good idea too (I can't start this as an IP). Or perhaps it could be put in to Foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration as a standalone section or under the Iran section. It could still be summaried some here if people want, the article was just getting long.--99.162.60.191 (talk) 15:43, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Why the erroneous name change

This article was - and should be - titled "Nuclear program of Iran." Even if you believe that Iran's nuclear program is completely civil in nature (a controversial view), there is more to it than nuclear power. There are research reactors, fuel cycle activities, and other non-power applications of nuclear energy. I tried to revert this change, but apparently I do not have the authority to do so. Someone should. NPguy (talk) 09:22, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I may be stupid, but I don't see nor understand your problem. The title is at the moment like you prefer it to be: "Nuclear program of Iran". Also on April 15, 22:47 it bore this title, then you made an edit "trying to correct a name change" but you did not change the name, as far as I understand what I see ... ?? --Corbertholt (talk) 12:49, 18 April 2009 (UTC) (Excuse me for messing: I have two user names, Corbertholt and Corriebertus, I forgot to take care and use only Corriebertus in the English Wikipedia. Sorry. --Corriebertus (talk) 13:29, 18 April 2009 (UTC))

On 22:00, 11 April 2009, Anthony Appleyard [7] moved the article to "Nuclear power in Iran". On 08:57, 18 April 2009 NPguy moved the article back and Anthony Appleyard fixed his move.

I didn't do the move, but it looks as if the idea was to match the naming for every other country (The United States, The Czech Republic, Pakistan, India, Ukraine, ...). Consistent naming makes sense. The point should be made that while there are or may be research reactors, fuel cycle activities, and other non-power applications of nuclear energy, there are also nuclear power usages of nuclear energy in Iran. Again, the edit seemed to be made for consistency sake.--68.251.185.77 (talk) 14:22, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

This discussion seems to technical for me. Looking up Appleyard’s change (18 April, 9:32) I can’t see any change made there by him/her. That ‘difference between pages’-page says something about “moved A to B over redirect: req”. I have no idea what that means, but before and after the ‘move’ I see the title being ‘Nuclear program of Iran’. --Corriebertus (talk) 16:19, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

• "req" above means "requested" (in Wikipedia:Requested moves) Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:19, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Anyways, Anthony Appleyard changed the name of the article to "Nuclear power in Iran", NPguy changed some of it back, and then Anthony finished changing it back to "Nuclear program of Iran". I wouldn't worry too much about the technical details of it, but you basically just click "Move" when you are signed in if you want to give an article a different title.--68.251.185.77 (talk) 16:53, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why the names of the articles need to be consistent, particularly when their content is not consistent. The renaming of this article was particularly egregious since it effectively endorsed Iran's claim that it's nuclear program is just about nuclear power, rather than about developing a weapons capability. And I think the article on Pakistan should probably be renamed "Nuclear program of Pakistan," since it covers more than nuclear power. Wikipedia seems to be missing any discussion of India's nuclear weapons program. NPguy (talk) 11:26, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Anyways, Anthony Appleyard seemed to find your reasoning convincing enough since he helped you rename the article. I find the title inconsequential, and I agree the other articles could probably use some work as well. I was just trying to clarify gor Corriebertus.--75.2.19.152 (talk) 16:31, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

All the Nuclear power in Country articles should be consistently named. All of them involve other aspects other than power, and there is no reason to name this article any differently than all of the other articles. From a U.S. centric point of view, Iran was part of the "axis of evil", and from an Iran centric point of view, guess which country is the "axis of evil". Hint, it isn't Iran. From an NPOV we need to treat every country and every article from an unbiased point of view, and name them the same. Originally this article started out only as about Iran's attempt to get nuclear weapons, but long ago that was split into separate articles, and as the hatnote at the top states "this article is about nuclear power in Iran". There is no reason to not name it as such. Nuclear program of Iran is the "erroneous name". 199.125.109.135 (talk) 04:43, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Nuclear power in the United States doesn't cover weapons and it touches on the fuel cycle only to the extent that it refers to other articles. Once there are multiple nuclear reactors in Iran then there will need to be a Nuclear power in Iran article to include all of them. Hcobb (talk) 19:37, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

An IP editor wrote: "All the Nuclear power in Country articles should be consistently named." Why?? To quote Emerson, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." NPguy (talk) 20:07, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I resemble that remark. A lot of little minds use this encyclopedia. Why shouldn't there be consistency? I'm not sure that Rihanna is proud to be advertised as having an IQ of 97, but half the population is by definition, less than 100 IQ. Not everyone can be as smart as you are. Or even as smart as I are. The nuclear weapons program is in a separate article. This article is only about nuclear power in Iran. Whether they have one reactor, none, or many, that is what the article is about. 199.125.109.124 (talk) 14:31, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

There really is Iran and weapons of mass destruction for allegations about a potential program, though I think some of that could be mentioned here as well. This article should mostly focus on the power and the program though. NPguy has been unaware that Iran's implementation of the Additional Protocol should be voluntary around 2003, was unaware that Iran was in the same category as other states in this time period (according to the IAEA), seemed unclear about what level is commonly taken to constitute HEU, and now seems unclear about when the IAEA Secretariat is reporting noncompliance in non-Iran cases. So we can all be willfully or claiming ignorance.--134.68.77.134 (talk) 14:43, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Where to put ‘reactions to the IAEA role …’?

(I propose to continue this discussion – started 18 April ’09 01:54 under section Could someone please organize the article? – in this separate talk-section.)

Dear sir or madam Rd232, You added a long story (991 words): Reactions to IAEA role in addressing the nuclear program of Iran, immediately after section The February 2009 IAEA report, in chapter History. Firstly: your title is fuzzy, the title should better have made clear at once from which actor(s) the given reactions are coming. Secondly: if the reactions are specifically made to the Feb 2009 report, you should have made your story a sub-section of that section, and not a following independent section. If however the reactions are made to the IAEA role in general, we first need a section, somewhere, describing what that IAEA role or stance or position in general is. Preferably in todays chapter 4: ‘Views and opinions etc.’ As long as we haven’t anywhere a section describing the IAEA position in general, it’s impossible to place, anywhere, a (sub)section commenting on that supposed ‘position’! Thirdly: your story – even without having read it – is obviously too long and therefore unreadable for 99% of the readers; in addition to bearing a clearer title, it should in itself again be divided into 3 or 4 subsubsections… --Corriebertus (talk) 13:13, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

This material was being merged from Mohamed ElBaradei and none of the editors who wanted it merged here (myself included) seemed to care if it was really merged or not. Much of it has been covered here, or is just extended reaction from or about ElBaradei. While useful, it seems slightly extraneous.--68.251.185.77 (talk) 14:23, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

That section (from the ElBaradei article) was useless. Best to ditch it. NPguy (talk) 11:27, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Overview and non-compliance

The overview contains a general statement that in past cases of safeguards noncompliance the state in question was expected to end sensitive fuel cycle activities. There have been five such cases: Iraq, Romania, North Korea, Libya and Iran. An IP editor edited this to contradict the general statement by adding references to Egypt and South Korea. But those were not cases of safeguards non-compliance, as determined by the Board of Governors. This article - particularly the overview - is not the plase to debate whether they should have been reported as non-compliance or whether they are exceptions to the general statement. Even if they had been called "non-compliance," they would not be counterexamples, since neither country is currently engaged in enrichment or reprocessing. Please discuss before editing further. NPguy (talk) 19:34, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

According to the Deputy Director General, Head of the Department of Safeguards, at the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1999 to June 2005, the IAEA Secretariat has reported specific cases of non-compliance with safeguards agreements by Iran, Libya, South Korea and Egypt to the board. So indeed there was non-compliance and the Board of Governors dealt with it differently in each instance. While this is in their purview, that doesn't mean it should just be skipped over since you seemingly don't want to mention it for some reason. If you want to find another source which says the Board of Governors decided not to follow up on the reporting this is perfectly fine. But the material shouldn't be removed. Just attributed and worded to match the source.--75.2.19.152 (talk) 02:43, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the Secretariat did not report "non-compliance" in any of these cases. Despite the Agency's statutory obligation to report non-compliance, ElBaradei decided in 2003 to insist that a decision on a "non-compliance" finding was left to the Board of Governors. Instead he used words like "failure." This - a departure from previous practice - is a significant criticism of ElBaradei's approach to safeguards compliance issues. I believe Goldschmidt is in effect criticizing ElBaradei for this practice. Others have made similar criticisms. By the way, Goldschmidt is the former Deputy Director General for Safeguards at the IAEA.

But the fact remains that there was no non-compliance report in the cases of Egypt or South Korea. Perhaps there should have been, but the Board judged that the safeguards failures fell below the threshold of non-compliance in those cases, whereas they exceeded that threshold in the cases of Iran and Libya. What this means is that, legally speaking, Egypt and South Korea are not exceptions to the general statement in the overview.

The overview is already too long. It started as a relatively simple statement, but in response to one disputatious editor I was compelled to add supporting detail. It really seems extraneous to a summary/overview section to go into this level of detail. That's why I'm reverting, again. NPguy (talk) 19:32, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Goldshmidt is sourced and a nonresident senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, along with thirty years of experience in the private sector and in international organizations, and a doctorate degree. Though I don't think this should be necessary, I have added a second source from Henry D. Sokolski/the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. Sokolski heads NPEC and was a former Deputy for Nonproliferation Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and later received the Secretary of Defense's Medal for Outstanding Public Service. He was a member of the Congressional Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, and also currently serves as an Adjunct Professor.

For record, Goldschmidt says

The head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, recently insisted that it is necessary to “give the International Atomic Energy Agency sufficient legal authority to ensure that non–nuclear-weapon states use nuclear energy exclusively for peaceful purposes. The IAEA and the Security Council together must be able to effectively deter, detect and respond to possible proliferation cheats.”

and

The Board should therefore adopt two resolutions, the first requiring member states to provide more information on past and future transfers of nuclear material and equipment, and a second unequivocally recognizing that previous failures and breaches committed by South Korea and Egypt constituted cases of noncompliance with their safeguards agreements.

So Goldschmidt was actually adopting ElBaradei's view that the Secretariat should be given more power and consistency in declaring safeguard noncompliance, not criticizing him (Goldschmidt thinks such an explicit declaration may currently be outside the Secretariat's purview and that it is actually the Board of Governors which should grant this ability to the Secretariat).

What is important is that there is a clear and very well reliably sourced debate about this, and it should obviously be acknowledged. You can't just include one side. You should either agree to attribute his arguments (in one form or another) or agree to remove the other material which paints a one-sided view of the issue. Presenting only one side of an argument is an WP:NPOV issue.

After rereading your post, I see that you may feel this is just too much detail. If that is the case, then simply move this sentence with the sentence before it (the one about Iraq, Libya, and North Korea) deeper in to the article or remove them both. But you can't and shouldn't ignore the fact that there is a debate. As Goldschmidt points out, acknowledging these concerns could close inconsistencies and leads to stronger nonproliferation.--75.2.19.152 (talk) 20:07, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Whatever the opinions of Goldschmidt and Sokolski, Egypt and South Korea were not found in non-compliance with their safeguards agreements by the competent authority, the IAEA Board of Governors. But more important, the debate over whether they were in fact in non-compliance (where my sympathies lie with Goldschmidt) is extraneous to the point being made, that for non-compliance findings involving enrichment and reprocessing activities, the resolution of the non-compliance was supposed to involve ending those activities. That may be a debate worth having, somewhere, but is not relevant here. If you wanted to make some of the discussion relevant, I suppose you could say that in a case that some argue should have been considered non-compliance (South Korea), where the activities involved enrichment and reprocessing, the resolution of the compliance question was based on the fact that those activities had been terminated. The Egypt case did not involve enrichment or reprocessing. NPguy (talk) 21:00, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

The fact that the IAEA Board of Governors chose not to report to the Security Council is the entire point of the debate because some argue that this was an inconsistency and an odd precedent. While the Board of Governors is free to make its own decisions, the fact that the Board of Governors is evaluating a threshold on a case-by-case basis differently each time is most certainly worth mentioning. Perhaps you could propose a wording which you are comfortable with or a few sources of your own.

For more clarification, Goldschmidt, who is actually and widely recognized as an expert, says:

Whether or not the word 'non-compliance' is used in the report transmitted to the board in Step 2 is irrelevant, as demonstrated in the case of Libya, which admitted to working on an undeclared nuclear-weapons programme for many years. This was an indisputable case of non-compliance with Libya's Non-Proliferation Treaty and safeguards undertakings. However, in the director general's report to the board in February 2004, the word 'non-compliance' was not used; rather, it was stated that 'Libya was in breach of its obligation to comply with the provisions of the Safeguards Agreement', which is synonymous. Certainly to be 'in breach of one's obligations to comply' and to be in 'noncompliance' is a distinction without a difference.

The Board of Governors makes a formal finding, but the Secretariat must also find "non-compliance" for the material to make it to the Board of Governors. The difference at the Board of Governors is the whole debate which is being noted (from two reliable sources, one being the former head of Safeguards within the IAEA).--75.2.19.152 (talk) 22:04, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Overview and non-compliance (2)

I think my comment above addresses the changes I made. I still believe this discussion is extraneous here and could be summarized with a one line statement that "in all other cases of safeguards non-compliance involving sensitive fuel cycle activities (enrichment or reprocessing), the resolution involved, or is expected to involve, halting those activities," and a cross-reference to a discussion elsewhere. Perhaps we need an article on IAEA safeguards, with a section on compliance, where this discussion would fit in naturally.

Unfortunately, the sources for some of the information I have added are IAEA reports to the Board of Governors, which are not available to the public. For example, unlike the Iran report, the South Korea and Egypt reports referred to "failures" but not "breaches." In the case of South Korea, the Board concluded

The Board shared the Director General’s view that given the nature of the nuclear activities described in his report, the failure of the Republic of Korea to report these activities in accordance with its safeguards agreements is of serious concern.
At the same time, the Board noted that the quantities of nuclear material involved have not been significant, and that to date there is no indication that the undeclared experiments have continued.

The case of Egypt is different because it did not involve enrichment or reprocessing. There's another case one could add to the list: Romania, which in 1992 informed the IAEA of undeclared irradiation and lab-scale reprocessing experiments undertaken by the previous (Ceaucescu) regime. In this case also the activity had stopped before it was reported to the Board. The Board made a non-compliance report.

I agree with the statement above that the Director General has an obligation to report "non-compliance" to the Board. That's what Article XII.C of the Statute requires. ElBaradei's failure to use the word "non-compliance" in the cases of Libya and Iran was an unfortunate departure from past cases, from 1991 through February 2003, to use the word "non-compliance" in reporting to the Board. His use of weasel words "breach" and "failure" gave the Board an excuse not to find non-compliance in Iran in November 2003, and set back efforts to respond to Iran's non-compliance by nearly three years.

I think Pierre Goldschmidt has a lot more credibility on this issue than Henry Sokolski, so I'm surprised that references to statements by Goldschmidt have been replaced with references to statements by Sokolski. In particular, I disagree with the Sokolski statement quoted in the first footnote. Who is the author if the Survival article in the second footnote? NPguy (talk) 19:03, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I didn't see this comment here or I would have read and replied to it before editing the article. Goldschmidt should obviously have had access to most of the same reports that you claim to, and he was probably fairly instrumental in their development since he was the one in charge of Safeguards at the IAEA from 1999 to 2005. The Survival piece is actually the exact same as the piece which is linked to on Carnegie and is of course written by Goldschmidt, I just accidentially grabbed it twice.

Though this is just my reading, Article XII.C of the IAEA Statute says

The inspectors shall report any non-compliance to the Director General who shall thereupon transmit the report to the Board of Governors. The Board shall call upon the recipient State or States to remedy forthwith any non-compliance which it finds to have occurred. The Board shall report the non-compliance to all members and to the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations.

Article XII doesn't give the Board of Governors the ability to make a formal finding until after the IAEA Secretariat has found its own version of "non-compliance". Article XII requires that the Board of Governors report to the UN Security Council and General Assembly as well as to all IAEA Member States any non-compliance with an IAEA safeguards agreement which it may then find to have occurred. So all findings of non-compliance found by the IAEA Board of Governors are legally required and essentially automatically go to the Security Council, and to make it to this stage the IAEA Secretariat must first find its own version of non-compliance. The Iran reports did not contain the word non-compliance yet the Board was able to make a formal finding, thus the word need not appear in the reports (Goldschmidt says this). This explains why the Secretariat found its own version of non-compliance which then directs the matter to the Board. What happens is that the Board makes a decision on a case-by-case basis as it is supposed to, but some argue that the threshhold they create is subjective and inconsistent.

Anyways, there has to be an earlier form of non-compliance for the Board of Governors to then be allowed to make a formal finding which then requires the report to go to the Security Council. What we are trying to describe is the difference in each case, or point out that such a threshhold can exist. So the Board of Governors chose (as it is perfectly allowed to) to act differently in each circumstance because it judged or deliberated each one on a threshhold on a case-by-case basis. This is all that is trying to really be reflected in the article. I would be perfectly willing to try to find a summary to reflect this as long as it also notes South Korea and Egypt in some form.

So, how about

In all sensitive fuel cycle activities (enrichment or reprocessing) cases where the IAEA Board of Governors has made a formal finding of non-compliance, the resolution has involved or is expected to involve halting those activities; however, not all instances of non-compliance reported by the Secretariat are formally found to be non-compliance by the IAEA Board of Governors.

I think the case of Iran is more serious than that of South Korea or Egypt, but I think the criticism or perception that the Board of Governors handles its findings differently and on a case-by-case basis should at least be briefly acknowledged in one form or another.--75.2.19.152 (talk) 21:14, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Your reading of Article XII.C is close, but not quite right. The best way to read this provision is that it contains two separate authorities on non-compliance. The inspectors, via the Director General must report non-compliance. The Board has an independent authority to "find" non-compliance in such a report or, even absent such a report. The fact that the same word is used does not mean that the conclusions have to be identical. Another way to explain it is that the Statute gives the Board decision making authority, and it would be inconsistent with that authority to say that the Board had no choice but to rubber stamp the report of the inspectors.

The significant break from precedent, and from what the Statute requires, came between February and November 2003. In February, the Director General reported "non-compliance" by North Korea, consistent with every past report to the Board. By November, the Director General had decided that he should not prejudice the Board's prerogative by using the word "non-compliance," so instead he used the words "breach" and "failure." He argued - as Goldschmidt has - that it is the substance of the DG's report that counts, not whether the word "non-compliance" is used.

I think it is significant that the later reports, on South Korea and Egypt, used the word "failure" but not "breach." Clearly the DG was suggesting that the problems were less significant. There are arguments - which I find reasonable but not persuasive - for making the threshold of "non-compliance" a relatively high one and concluding on that basis that the "failures" in South Korea and Egypt did not constitute "non-compliance." The closest other case was Romania, which I mentioned above. The line between Romania on the one hand and Egypt and South Korea on the other is very narrow.

I am choosing not to edit the overview further for now. I still think the details now in that paragraph are out of place. I would prefer a simple general statement, that in cases of non-compliance (or almost non-compliance) involving enrichment or reprocessing activities, the resolution normally requires that those activities stop, and that Iran, in seeking to continue enrichment after being caught with a secret enrichment program, is the exception, out of step with nonproliferation norm and precedent. NPguy (talk) 21:03, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Both of our readings on Article XII.C are really irrelevant since they remain unpublished, and I essentially agree with your reading. The whole idea of where to set the threshhold for non-compliance belongs to the Board of Governors, and this is where it should belong at least right now since that is where Statute says it belongs right now.

Again, the point of the matter is that there is a debate going on about where exactly that threshhold for noncompliance should be at. You personally feel that the threshhold for South Korea and Egypt was too low and agree with the Board of Governors, while Goldschmidt happens to argue that they should have been high enough on the threshhold to at least render a formal finding of noncompliance for precedent purposes. Goldschmidt feels this would strengthen nonproliferation in general.

The fact of the matter is that there are two authorities on non-compliance, and the inspectors, via the Director General must report non-compliance. The inspectors and Director General did exactly this for South Korea and Egypt when they presented their report to the Board of Governors. The Board of Governors then used its discretion to determine to not make a formal finding of non-compliance, or the Board used its decision making authority to not rubber-stamp the report of the inspectors. All of this is fine. But then, some have come out with a debate in reliable publications that maybe the Board of Governors should have also made findings of non-compliance in these cases as well. This may or may not be a valid viewpoint or criticism, but it is a reliable one which is verifiable to multiple external sources, and it is atleast worthy of mention.

So, it would be perfectly fine to say that some previous cases have involved a referral to the Security Council and a resolution requiring a ceasing of problematic activities. But when there is a reliably sourced debate about associated precedents, it should be mentioned and incorporated in the article. The problem with "all" is that it may be somewhat misleading, it skims over the debate, and it is really a synthesis of sources. If you could find a reliable source for your argument, then it could at least be directly attributed in the article with "so-and-so says". I would still encourage you to find a source to directly attribute your argument or propose other summary wordings.--75.2.19.152 (talk) 12:38, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

There's one point where I think you have the facts wrong. The IAEA did not report "non-compliance" to the Board in either the South Korean or the Egyptian case. Those reports did not use the word "non-compliance" or close synonyms. If these were, as Goldschmidt argues (and I tend to agree), cases of non-compliance, both the Secretariat and the Board abdicated their responsibility to report them as such.

I wish I had the time to write a Wikipedia article about IAEA safeguards and include a section on non-compliance. NPguy (talk) 22:15, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

"The IAEA did not report "non-compliance" to the Board in either the South Korean or the Egyptian case. Those reports did not use the word "non-compliance" or close synonyms." The Iranian report didn't use the word non-compliance either, so how was the Board of Governors able to find non-compliance under your reading?--75.2.19.152 (talk) 22:30, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Under the IAEA Secretariat's current legal reading, the inspectors and the Director General do not have ultimate authority to find "non-compliance" and should not usurp the prerogatives of the Board. The Board had not choice but to operate under this interpretation and exercise its authority independent of - and absent - a formal "non-compliance" report from the DG. To put it another way, the Statute does not prevent the Board from exercising its prerogative to report non-compliance even when the Secretariat abdicates its responsibility in that regard. NPguy (talk) 22:41, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Not to quote Goldschmidt as gospel, but he was director of Safeguards in the Secretariat during the given time period, so he is probably a reliable source about viewpoint of the Secretariat at that time. Anyways:

Clarifying the technical and statutory basis by which the IAEA exposes noncompliance is one immediate way the nonproliferation regime can be strengthened. According to Article XII.C of the IAEA Statute, reporting a state to the Security Council for noncompliance with its safeguards undertakings can be seen as a process comprising the following steps, the last three of which can be taken in sequence or simultaneously:
1. Agency inspectors report any noncompliance to the Director General through the head of the Department of Safeguards.
2. The Director General transmits the report to the Board of Governors.
3. The Board makes a formal fnding of noncompliance.
4. The Board calls upon the state in question “to remedy forthwith any noncompliance which it fnds to have occurred.”
5. The Board reports the noncompliance to all members and to the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations.
Since 2003, the IAEA Secretariat has reported specifc cases of noncompliance with safeguards agreements by Iran, Libya, South Korea, and Egypt to the Board (step 2). The actions taken by the Board in each case were not consistent and, if they go uncorrected, will create unfortunate precedents.
Whether or not the word “noncompliance” is used in the report transmitted to the Board in step 2 is irrelevant, as demonstrated by the case of Libya, which admitted to working on an undeclared nuclear weapons program for many years.

I have also read that the IAEA Secretariat simply did not want to put any prejudice in to the Board's process, but I do not remember the source of the information. Anyways, do you have a link to the Secretariat's current legal reading?--75.2.19.152 (talk) 22:49, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Goldschmidt is essentially arguing that you can report non-compliance without calling it such. The Libya and Iran reports had a synonym "breach." The Korea and Egypt ones did not. I do not have a source (just my own clear recollection) on the point of not prejudicing the Board. As I have noted, it was a novel legal claim, inconsistent with practice up to that point. NPguy (talk) 23:03, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Ok, right. Anyways, Goldschmidt personally felt they were all cases of non-compliance and he was in charge of Safeguards. To me it appears there would have to be a report of informal and inoperative non-compliance (not referred to explicitly to avoid a prejudice as you suggest) by the Secretariat for the Board of Governors to then make a formal finding of non-compliance which it then elected to do with Iran. This is just the way it appears from my reading, but you could be right as well, or maybe we are both wrong. My point is just that there is a debate and that it should be documented in one form or another. The level of ambiguity with the term noncompliance that Iran was able to play off of was one of Goldschmidt's criticism in his article, but I think that is really irrelevant to the discussion.--75.2.19.152 (talk) 23:09, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Requested move April 2009

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no concensus Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:20, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. It should be evident from past discussions on this page that there is no consensus to change the name of this article from "Nuclear program of Iran" to "Nuclear power in Iran." The content of the article matches the current title better than the proposed one. This distinguishes it from most articles with the title "Nuclear power in [COUNTRY X]." There is no POV in this name. NPguy (talk) 06:29, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support. Extreme POV to even want to distinguish it from every other article about nuclear power in XXX. 199.125.109.126 (talk) 19:25, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
• Weak support. Allegations of possible weapons usage are more appropriate for Iran and weapons of mass destruction.--75.2.19.152 (talk) 20:00, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Allow me to respond to these two comments. First, it is not POV to look at the contents of an article and conclude on that basis whether the title is appropriate. The contents of this article address many things aside from nuclear power. Second, in my view it is POV to try to discuss Iran's nuclear program and deny that there are questions about whether it is entirely peaceful in nature. The IAEA Director General has acknowledged those questions and said it is incumbent on Iran to resolve them.

On the face of it, it might make sense to split this article - edit it down to one purely about nuclear power. But then where do we put the discussion of Iran's nuclear research and fuel cycle activities? In an article on Iran and WMD? That would seem even more prejudicial, implying that Iran's enrichment program is unequivocally part of a WMD program. It would also make the WMD article even more unwieldy.

So to me the least POV option is to leave the title unchanged.

If we want to enforce a foolish consistency (to quote Emerson) in article titles, the best thing would be to change all the "Nuclear Power in X" articles to "Nuclear Program of X." Then there would be no implication of singling out Iran for special treatment. I think that is unnecessary, since most of those other articles really are about nuclear power, but I would not oppose it. NPguy (talk) 21:16, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

That, in fact is the point. The best thing is to either change all the other articles to nuclear program of XXX or change this one to nuclear power in Iran. However, changing all of them to "program of" would never fly, because "of XXX" means specifically, officially by the government of XXX, while "in XXX" means licensed by XXX. However, in this case that is too fine a distinction to go through each of the countries and determine if all of the nuclear industry is specifically operated only by the government of that country, or not, which would be a moving target anyway. I have often stated that to everyone in Iran, and to everyone in the West it can be suggested that the only reason for a nuclear industry is to obtain nuclear weapons, but that is not the official statement of the government of Iran, which is that it is solely for the purpose of obtaining nuclear power. However, saying that the purpose is solely for nuclear weapons is specifically a personal opinion, making it a POV. We don't name butterflies "icky monarch" just because we think they are, we use encyclopedic neutral tone of voice. Ditto for nuclear power in Iran - we have to distance ourselves from any personal view and treat the subject in an unbiased manner. That is why just wanting this article to be named differently from all the others is a POV. Please bear in mind that the people in Iran don't necessarily share the same true blue view of the U.S. that people in the corn belt of Iowa might, and Wikipedia now has a potential audience of 1 Billion people who now have Internet access. With respect to editing the article, editors often have taken out material that is solely related to any alleged attempt to obtain nuclear weapons, but in any nuclear power article article it is certainly appropriate to make the connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. In particular, there is in fact no difference that I know of between the enrichment of Uranium to reactor grade and the enrichment to weapons grade - you simply stir the pot a little longer. However, that is what inspectors are for - to monitor the final product to insure that is not being done. So that bit is entirely appropriate to the article as well. 199.125.109.102 (talk) 13:16, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

You wouldn't have to rename every "nuclear power in" article. You could limit it to the countries that have significant nuclear fuel cycle activities. The underlying problem is that there is a false dichotomy between nuclear power and nuclear weapons programs. The fuel cycle is inherently ambiguous and can contribute to either. And when you have a country with a fuel cycle program that doesn't fit its power program, that makes it particularly difficult to conclude that the fuel cycle program is purely civil. It raises suspicions that should not be swept under the rug with a misleading article name. NPguy (talk) 22:21, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

I fail to see any significance to having "significant nuclear fuel cycle activities". That would be like naming coal power in XXX, coal program of XXX if they had a coal mine and coal power in XXX if they didn't? It certainly is not the purpose of WP to have "suspicions". 199.125.109.99 (talk) 20:22, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

The analogy with coal is a red herring. Coal mining doesn't produce fissile material. There are many (most) countries with nuclear power that do not have significant fuel cycle activities. The more important thing is that Iran has a major fuel cycle R&D program and a small nuclear power program. In many ways they don't fit together. Focusing on nuclear power pretends that they do. NPguy (talk) 20:34, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Organizing the article

Since months, maybe years, many editors on this page have agreed that the article is looking kind of horrible, unorganized, unsurveyable, hardly useful, the article is much too long, many sections are much too long. I came up with a raw idea of what a reorganized article might look like, in the previous discussion Could someone please organize the article? on 12 April. No one came up with fundamental objections against that. On 15 April I started out along this idea by organizing section 2.2 (1970s), there were no objections raised, on the contrary.

So today I decided to organize section 2.3 (old title: 'Post-1979 Revolution') along the same basic idea. While doing so, I also made some more minor improvements on section 2.2. Mainly, I’ve again simply tried to split up the section 2.3 in: plain facts; (re)actions in 1979-89 from Europe, IAEA, U.S.; reactions (on events from 1979-89) since 2000 from Europe and Argentina. In some cases, I have double placed some information in two subsections. In some cases it appeared inevitable to change a sentence structure, to add bits of information from a formerly adjacent sentence, etc. Some information I’ve had to replace to sections ‘1970s’, ‘1990-2002’, and ‘2002-2006’. Some information, concerning Eurodif, seems off topic here, I will place that in article Eurodif (in the next hour). One sentence I’ve left out completely: “Their cancellation came after certainty that the Iranian government would unilaterally terminate the contract themselves, following the revolution, which paralyzed Iran's economy and led to a crisis in Iran's relations with the West.” It is an ungrammatical and not informative sentence. “Certainty” is not a point in time. I’ve also changed the title and contents of subsection ‘Iranian reactions since 2000’, leaving out some too vague utterances of mr. Bahgat. --Corriebertus (talk) 13:50, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I really don't think this is an improvement. In fact, I think it takes part of the article that was pretty cherent and makes it mimic the parts that are pretty incoherent. The problem was never in the earlier parts of the article, which present a largely factual and chronological narrative on Iran's nuclear program. The current reorganization seems artificial in breaking up chronologically and causally linked material into pieces depending on who the actor was. I would revert this section and focus instead on making the post-2002 text look more chronological, while pulling out from the chronological narrative various repetitive policy arguments, and organizing those policy arguments coherently into new sections.

As an example of the problem with the current organization, there is now a section break between a brief paragraph on the IAEA role and a short section on the U.S. response. The two are part of a single episode, with a single source, and should be in a single paragraph. What needs fixing here is not to divide who said or did what but to correct the factual misrepresentations of the source document. For example, it was not an IAEA document that laid out a plan to develop Iranian fuel cycle capabilities, but an Iranian one.

I won't revert, pending further discussion, but I really think this is not helpful. NPguy (talk) 21:10, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm at least going to rename some of the sections. I don't know why it says (re)action--71.156.94.174 (talk) 03:12, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for reacting. The section 2.3 consisted of 882 words. You (NPguy) say, section 2.3 in the old situation (until 25 April) was a "largely factual and chronological narrative", "pretty coherent".

Well excuse me, perhaps I'm too stupid then for Wikipedia, but I consider the old version of the section highly incoherent and highly unchronological. (Which ofcourse doesn't prove yet that my version is better, I agree to that.) How can you claim it was 'chronological' when so many of the stated facts even go without a date, and the rest keeps jumping forward and backward in time? Already the first sentence speaks of "after the Revolution" (no date), then in the same sentence jumps to 1983; the next sentence an "IAEA report" without date; sentence four talks again of "after 1979" without date, the following sentences regress to years 1973, 1977 etc. etc.

Observing that the old version consisted of seven subsections, one might argue that each of these separate subsections were in itself more or less coherent. But simply putting seven, more or less coherent, mini stories behind each other does not, in my opinion, make a coherent section!

What is (in the old version) the connection between subsection 1 (Iran-IAEA-U.S.) and subsection 2 (France-uranium-Eurodif-Belgium-Cogéma-etc)? And why comes nr. 1 first, and not nr.2? I've no idea, but if you consider the old situation coherent, you must have an answer to that.

If a section of 882 words, 38 sentences, is coherent, as you state, it must be possible to divide it into smaller parts. It is our job, us encyclopedia-makers, to organize long and difficult stories (like section 2.3, and like the whole article) into something structured and surveyable for the not-smart, not-omniscient, even for the rather stupid wiki reader (that is, for most wiki readers), by at least making surveyable subsections in it. I can accept that you don't very much appreciate my attempt for splitting up into subsections. But in that case, I expect from you a better proposal for organizing this section into subsections.

Of course everyone may criticize my proposal, but just saying it is no good and not proposing something better, that's not wiki. I've sincerely tried to select from that long section (882 words) what seemed the most vital and drastic events for the nuclear activities in Iran: restart; no fuel from U.S. nor from France; Kraftwerk withdraws; U.S. and Kraftwerk and France withhold money Iran is entitled to; Iran turns to taking hostages; Iraq destroys the reactors.

The rest I considered still important, but slightly less important and vital. So I pushed that into those subsections. Still there to find when you're interested in it.

Ofcourse every selection and every splitting up is arbitrary and disputable. But making encyclopedia is making choices. Refusing to make choices renders an article into a totally unreadable heap of letters and words and sentences. That's no encyclopedia, that's nothing.

You speak of misrepresentations of facts. Nobody will stop you to correct misstated facts. But that is not what I was working at. I just took for granted what I found, assumed it was factual correct, and only tried to organize what was supposedly correct into something organized and surveyable for an average not omniscient wiki reader.

Whatever you propose to do with section post-2002: please go ahead. 1972 words, a completely untransparant nightmare. Make it surveyable.

By the way, mr/mrs 71.156etc, I don't mind much about the changing of '(re)action' into 'reaction'. --Corriebertus (talk) 20:54, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I went back and looked again, and my comment stands. The previous organization was more coherent that the current one, which has so many trivial headings that it is completely scattered. It would be more coherent to return to the previous text and insert two or three subheadings. The 1979 revolution is a reasonable breakpoint.

At least that's my opinion. What do others think (aside from me and Corriebertus)? NPguy (talk) 21:18, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad my edits weren't too contentious. I think NPGuy's problem is that information may be organized by source and date, but that information which is related logically or by event may have been broken up. I do think that organizing information by event or likewise may be more logical, but I think the problem may be knowing what is related if you don't have as much knowledge about the material. So I think the best thing to do might be for NPGuy to list a little bit more of what he is talking about for CorrieBertus, or for CB to try to do a bit more background research when possible.

I should have more time to actually compare the versions and make comments within a few days, real life is kind of hectic right now.--76.214.104.121 (talk) 02:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

On 26 April, NPguy argued: the article formerly was pretty coherent; my (Corriebertus’) revision makes it incoherent, it breaks up “causally linked material”. He pointed to the example of the formerly first paragraph (“After … Iran informed the IAEA … / … in 1983 the IAEA even planned … an IAEA report stated … / … the United States persuaded …”), now to be found separated in section 'Post Revolution 1979-89' and subsections 'IAEA reactions 79-89' and 'U.S. reactions 79-89'.

I could understand that criticizm, but strongly disagree with it, as I pointed out on 27 April. I consider the main goal of an encyclopedia to be, to give an easy overview of main facts on some topic to the not experted reader. If such a reader is interested in ‘the history of the Iranian nuclear program’ he should be enabled to quickly find the main events of 1950-1970, of 1970-79, of 1979-89, 1990-1999, etcetera. A consequence of pursuing that priority can be that messages which formerly stood together, and perhaps were, or seemed, causally linked, are in the new version more separated from each other.

So I extracted from section 2.3 (882 words, 38 sentences) what I considered the main events, in 209 words, eight sentences. The rest I put away in five subsections, still all there for the interested reader. I believe my approach serves the not-experted reader a whole lot better.

‘Causal link’ in the mentioned example between part 1 (Iran informed…) and part 2 (IAEA planned…) is in my version less visible. But how sure are we of such ‘causal link’? We are not; it was just the standing behind each other of these messages that suggested causal link. If someone has reliable information pointing to any causal link, he is welcome to add that to the article. It might be a ground to adjust the section or the article once again. Causal link, in mentioned example, between part 2 (IAEA) and part 3 (U.S.) is still unmistakeably clear in my new version.

Ofcourse I can accept detailed criticizm on the choices I’ve made in separating main from secundary events, and in splitting the rest up into subsections.

On 27 April I challenged NP, to tell me what was so ‘coherent’ in the old version. He does not respond to that on 27 April, just repeats his opinion that the previous organization was “more coherent”. I’m sorry, but if you can’t describe its ‘coherence’, it becomes less plausible that it wás coherent.

NPguy on 27 April also starts about “so many trivial headings”, suggests making another division with “two or three subheadings”, for example “the 1979 revolution” as a breakpoint. Wake up, sir: this whole section is already behind that revolution, so that can’t serve as breakpoint. I already asked NP on 27 April: if you want some other subdivision, be specific and tell us how you propose then to split the section up into parts. NP doesn’t answer, just vaguely speaks of some other ’subheadings’. We are still waiting for your proposals, sir.

“So many” headings NP says: I’ve made five. Why would that be “so many”, implying “too many”? You want four, three? Tell us which three, and why.

The headings are “trivial” you say, and that doesn’t sound like a compliment either. My headings describe as simply as possible what is to be found in the (sub-)sections. If that is not what an encyclopedia section heading should do, then what should an encyclopedia heading do? --Corriebertus (talk) 16:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

When I have time I'll comment in more detail. But there are now 12 headings covering the period 1970-2002, where it seems to me two would be sufficient (1970-79 and 1979-2002). You don't need signposts for all the other artificial distinctions separating actions by various actors instead of telling coherent story. NPguy (talk) 21:18, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate the effort and note that it is always much easier to be a critic. That being said, I do think 12 headings is a bit much, but I also think the other section was pretty incoherent too. The problem is its always hard to do this in a way that multiple people are happy with. So it might be best to wait a few days for feedback to get some specifics, and then go at it again if you still want.--76.214.104.121 (talk) 01:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Npguy, you are annoyed by the 13 headings covering the period 1970-2002, and I can understand that, and also mr/mrs 76.214etc agrees with that. (Section 2.2 and 2.3: 11 headings over some 1200 words in total.) The ‘fault’ here lies however not in those so many headings, but in the abundancy of text, words, information they try to ‘head’. A subsection containing between 100 and 300 words is totally normal, as I argued before (14 April, see above). (Other arguments you bring up again that I have answered to already once or twice I won’t keep answering to seven more times.)

If someone feels the urge to condense those 1200 words text in a responsible way to say 600 words, I would, again, not object to such an effort. I chose, as we see, to organize the abundant information which earlier editors apparently have judged all indispensable for the article, while apparently forgetting that an encyclopedia article should in the first place always stay surveyable and readable and organized for the hardly informed reader. And a unorganized heap of more than say three or four (very important) bits of information, or a sequence of not connected coherent mini-stories, does not make a practicable encyclopedia article, nor a practicable (sub-)section in such article.

Let’s, however, not despair. My idea is, to carry on one bit more with this organizing, working through period 1990-2000 in the same manner (that section seems short already), then composing a fine summary of the whole 1950-2000 period, and then pushing away this whole long and annoying story with its 13 or 15 headings into a separate article, in conformity with the widely heaved sigh that this article is much much much too long, and in accordance with standard wikipedia philosophies. --Corriebertus (talk) 12:30, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I have fixed what I saw as the rampant excess of subheadings in the 1970s section. The next step will be harder - merging the post-revolution and 1990-2002 sections, organizing coherently (and mostly chronologically), and eliminating distracting subheads. I'll pause now because that's more work and to see reactions to what I've done so far. NPguy (talk) 10:48, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

You (NPguy) have summarized that section 2.2 from 499 to 444 words, and I don’t object to that, because you’ve maintained the main facts. You have also removed what you call “distracting headings and cross-references” in order to “restore some logic”. I disagree to that. We’ve been discussing this at length, I’ve contradicted there most all of your arguments, you have hardly commented on any arguments I’ve put forward.

Now you just push through your strange idea that this section of 444 words you restored were more “logic”. I’ve asked you several times (27 April, 29 April) to reveal any ‘logic’ in that, and have asked you several times (27 April, 29 April, 3 May) why this approach would be surveyable and readable and organized enough for a hardly informed reader.

As I’ve pointed out some six times since 12 April and do now for the seventh time: some editors around here, for example NPguy, don’t seem to try to look at the article as a non-expert would see it. The non-expert would need surveyableness in the first place and would thereby hardly or not at all be ‘distracted’ by some subheadings. On the contrary is more likely. You NPguy probably know quite a lot already about the subject, everything that’s noted in the section or in the article, or even more than that, and for that reason would not need subheadings or shorter subsections, or main facts selected from a long period, and would indeed even get distracted by them. So the fundamental question here is still, as I’ve put forward already several times: do we want wikipedia to be so unreadable that only (semi-)experts can use or enjoy it, or do we want it to be practicable for the 95% of wiki-readers who know little or very little or nothing on the topic?

I obviously strongly protest against this autocratic behaviour of NPguy, evading discussion and just forcing his way on the article. I’ll await some reactions, and consider what should be done. --Corriebertus (talk) 11:15, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Several weeks ago, Corriebertus made wholesale edits to this and the following section. I objected at the time that it made the article less coherent and added needless and distracting subheads. No one supported his position, and at least one other editor supported the view that too many headings had been added. I doubt that a non-expert reader would find the previous version easier to understand or survey. So I felt justified in editing to correct a problem with readability.

At a minimum, I think the subheads introduced by Corriebertus (focusing on who said or did what when) detract from understanding. If we need subheads, they need to be less artificial.

So this is not a case of high-handed editorial conduct. It's an editorial disagreement. Let's see what others think. NPguy (talk) 19:17, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I was wrong monday when I said NPguy ‘evades discussion’: he ignores discussion, which is perhaps worse. Reacting on his long list of half or whole lies just here above, would take me some longer. --Corriebertus (talk) 17:45, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand this comment. I have explained why I disagree with edits by Corriebertus. I explained what I intended to do. I left time for discussion and the only third party comment favored my approach. So I made the changes. My basic point is that it is easier for the general reader to understand the article if material that is related logically should be textually connected, rather than divided by artificial divisions. A second point would be that headings should be used not as signposts for scanning but to indicate logical separations. NPguy (talk) 20:45, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I’ve said here what I have to say about it: NPguy ignores the fact that he stands alone in his uncompromised rejection of my edits of 15 and 29 April [I mean 26 April;--Corriebertus (talk) 06:35, 16 May 2009 (UTC)]; blatantly and impudently lies about that fact in his posting on 11 May; and high-handedly removed my edits on 10 May. As long as the other editors can’t find the time to react on that situation and that behaviour, I’m not gonna waste my time here on ‘discussing’ with a liar. --Corriebertus (talk) 14:13, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Corriebertus, I have tried to address the substance of our disagreement. In response all I see are increasingly frustrated personal attacks. I agree that further discussion along these lines is pointless, but I would be open to a discussion of the substance. It's up to you. NPguy (talk) 22:50, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

To follow up, I believe Corriebertus has been editing this article in good faith. I also believe the sections he and I have edited are better than they were before. I think we have an honest disagreement over how best to present historical material for a naive (non-expert) audience. I regret that Corriebertus does not appear to share that view, and I apologize if I have offended him. That was not my intention. I remain open to discussion. NPguy (talk) 07:33, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Why is there no inventory of Iran's nuclear facilities in this article? It is way too long and has no structure. A suggested structure:

1. History 2. Summary of Iran's nuclear plants, numbers of centrifuges, and amounts of uranium. 3. Summary of IAEA reports and Security Council resolutions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.234.220.67 (talk) 17:09, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

In April and May 2009 I considered this article unreadable, and made an effort to organize it. The effort was not perfect, but reverting the effort totally, as NPguy did, was not good, needless, and uncooperative. So I’ve taken some time off from this wiki page, working elsewhere on wiki. The article is an even worse absolute mess today. For a topic as vital for decisions of war and peace on this one earth this situation is both a danger for mankind and a bloody shame for the Wikipedia community. Articles with sections of 2661 words long (Views on Iran's nuclear power program # US and European viewpoint), 1995 words (History # 2002–2006), 1627 words (History # 2007-present # Iran), etcetera, are unreadable for 99 percent of English-speaking humanity, are absurd, and make not an encyclopaedia but a parody on such thing. Who would second this opinion? Who would second part(s) of this opinion, and if so, which part(s)? And … the article is also 202 kilobytes long … --Corriebertus (talk) 17:01, 6 August 2009 (UTC) P.S. Perhaps I’ve made mistakes (too) in the way I’ve addressed matters or persons. I usually make such mistakes, I’m world famous for such mistakes in my home town, so most likely I will have made such mistakes here, too. --Corriebertus (talk) 17:14, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

What to do when the source gets it wrong?

Another editor and I have gone back and forth over a passage based on the following from a Congressional staff report:[8]

In reports to the IAEA Board of Governors starting in June 2003, ElBaradei criticized Iran, saying it had concealed its nuclear activities and thwarted efforts by the agency to determine whether there was a military side to its program. But he resisted pressure from the United States to take the next step and declare Iran in violation of the NPT because, he said repeatedly, the IAEA had no proof of a military program.

I think this is wrong. ElBaradei does not have the authority to declare Iran in violation of the NPT, nor would he have considered doing so. He does have the obligation under the IAEA Statute to report to the Board of Governors if his inspectors report to him that Iran is in "non-compliance" with its safeguards agreement. (Non-compliance with a safeguards agreement is not quite the same thing as a violation of the NPT, though the latter may be seen as the logical implication of the former.) The Board then has an independent decision whether it finds non-compliance. If it does so, it must report to the UN Security Council (and the UN General Assembly and all IAEA Member States).

Instead, ElBaradei argued that, because the Board of Governors had the ultimate authority to find non-compliance, he lacked the authority to do so. My reading of the history is that ElBaradei was afraid of that if he reported using the word "non-compliance," this would force the Board to report the matter to the UN Security Council and give the United States the excuse to attack. This fear was not unfounded, given what happened in Iraq.

As far as I know, ElBaradei has never linked his decision not to use the word "non-compliance" to the lack of evidence of links to a weapons program. In fact, such evidence is not required for a non-compliance finding. Neither Iran's safeguards agreement nor the IAEA Statute defines linkage to a weapons program as a requirement for "non-compliance."

I'm still getting used to the subtleties of Wikipedia's standards of evidence. I would think that if a source is wrong on several key points it is unreliable on its face and therefore should not be cited, particularly on the points where it is wrong.

I would appreciate the reaction of other editors before I edit this out again. NPguy (talk) 23:30, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

I just now saw this and basically agree with what you have said and find the wording of the report somewhat curious. You can attribute something in quotes and put {{sic}} if you believe it is incorrect, but one typically wouldn't expect that would be necessary for a congressional staff report. As a U.S. congressional staff report, it still seems like it would be reliable for the viewpoint of at least part of the U.S. government, but maybe not as reliable on the workings of the IAEA. I have tried to edit the wording in this regard, maybe you would too if you think there is still an issue. I would typically suggest finding a better source, but this really should be pretty reliable for the viewpoint of at least part of the US government.--68.248.155.2 (talk) 03:44, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

This article is collapsing under its own weight

It's much too long, highly repetitious, and incoherent. Various editors have added their favorite arguments, and it has become like a bulletin board encrusted with layers of past flyers. I don't know if it's fixable. Time to start over from scratch. NPguy (talk) 03:56, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

When I read through originally, I did notice that it made essentially the same arguments over and over again. I am an inclusionist however, and I would hate to see facts deleted just to cut down on length. I don't know if starting over from scratch is the best way to go here as we'll most likely lose a great deal of information in the revision. Perhaps something more cautious, like a section by section rewrite? AzureFury (talk | contribs)

I wasn't serious about starting from scratch. But I don't think a section-by-section review would help because the structure is completely incoherent. The current structure invites grandstanding and repetition and makes it impossible for an uninformed reader to understand the subject. What set me off was the latest addition on Iran's "alleged studies" of weaponization. The addition is long, out of place, out of proportion, and unbalanced, as it is essentially intended to debunk the allegations and dismiss the issue. It take so much work to try to restore balance, when the right thing to do is probably to cut it back to a couple of paragraphs and - if there is sufficient interest - start a separate article. NPguy (talk) 02:17, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah...that section definitely goes into excessive and unrelated detail. Basically I think it could be summarized in one or two paragraphs. The main thing that I see is that "There's an incriminating laptop, but no proof it came from Iran." AzureFury (talk | contribs) 03:58, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

In fact, there's more than just a laptop. That's one way the new material is misleading. NPguy (talk) 03:02, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

"Excessive and unrelated detail"?? The Laptop is the main basis for the allegations of Iranian nuclear weapons work. The "details" are what a wikipedia entry are supposed to have. The section organizes the known information about the issue, which are mentioned in a disorganized manner here and there in the article. If anything has to change, it is the rest of the article. And, if you think 'there's more than just the laptop' then include the information, rather than deleting this. Note that the section already states that the IAEA says the information from the laptop has been corroborated from other sources.

Before we start flaming eachother, let me repeat that I am an inclusionist and the last thing I would want to do is delete information from Wikipedia. So you don't need to cry "censorship!" because that's not what I'm advocating here. If you want to get technical, Wikipedia is supposed to summarize topics, not include every conceivable bit of information. As I read through the section a second time, it feels like an attempt to include a persuasive essay, but take out all declarative statements in order to make it academic. The author is trying to make a point, and only refrains from explicitly stating the point. If we're talking about the legitimacy of the laptop in this section then we really only need facts supporting or undermining it. Things like the 2-3 paragraphs on the Modalities Agreement really don't seem to add to either side in my opinion, though I could just be missing the implicitly stated point. If covering every aspect of the laptop really interests you, you could just make another article, and we could link to it from here. But as it stands now, I really do think the section should be rewritten more directly and concisely. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 16:40, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Another problem with this new section is that it treats the issue of the laptop as a separate issue out of context with the rest of the article. The laptop is a subset of the alleged studies, which is a subset of the modalities agreement. In addition to its tendentious bias, this section has that logic backwards. NPguy (talk) 02:55, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was consensus against move. As for program vs. programme, certainly that can be revisited but what is it about this Iran-related topic that makes the commonwealth spelling more appropriate to the US/Canadian?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:24, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

---

Nuclear program of Iran → Nuclear power in Iran — contrary to those who may have not noticed the hatnote, this article is about nuclear power in Iran, not about any possible development of nuclear weapons, which is covered in a separate article. As such it should be named the same as all other articles about nuclear power in a country. See, for example Nuclear power in the United States. 199.125.109.108 (talk) 16:56, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose Let's not rehash this again. The question remains wide open whether Iran's nuclear fuel cycle activities are part of a nuclear power program or a nuclear weapon program. The fact that they were conducted in secret, in violation of Iran's NPT safeguards violations, raises significant doubt about Iran's claims to a peaceful program. We should not give this article a title that prejudices that question in favor of Iran's position. NPguy (talk) 03:17, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose research reactors are only peripherally nuclear power generation, and isotope separation and extraction is not nuclear power, it's "nuclear industry". Nuclear industry in Iran is fine by me though. 76.66.197.30 (talk) 14:09, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

"Industry" implies commercial; "program" more appropriate for governmental activity. NPguy (talk) 02:41, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose The proposed title sounds politically motivated, since it seems to imply that Iran's nucleur programme isn't highly controversial (unlike that of the USA, and most other countries). YeshuaDavid • Talk • 17:53, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

• Or move to Nuclear programme of Iran? :: This message was put in my user talk page: Anthony Appleyard (talk) 12:36, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
  • "I noticed you've been involved with moves of this before—I tried to fix the spelling of 'programme'. Could you tweak it either back to power, or programme spelt appropriately for the context. —Sladen (talk) 08:02, 30 September 2009 (UTC)"

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Israeli newspaper

This site:[JP] has ana rticle from an Israeli newspaper about this subject.Agre22 (talk) 14:58, 24 November 2009 (UTC)agre22

WP:TLDR

Anyone familiar with the abbreviation TLDR (Too Long, Didn't Read)? It rather applies to this article. It is way too long. And does it include anything about the recent "Iranian nuclear trigger" issue? I gave up trying to find out, but here's an interesting article [9]. Rd232 ^talk 20:57, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Need disclaimer on the top?

So at this point, this article covers both the nuclear program of Iran and the allegations of nuclear weapon development, and all related legal issues. Do we need a disclaimer at the top of the article directing readers to another article? AzureFury (talk | contribs) 02:11, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I find the Iran nuclear article to not be neutral. It omits many facts that are negative regarding Iran's efforts.66.169.39.255 (talk) 14:33, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I find that pretty unlikely considering the length of the article and the number of editors contributing to it. Did you have something specific in mind that is supposedly missing from the article? AzureFury (talk | contribs) 01:45, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the article has a pro-Iran bias. The problem is not predominantly the omission of facts (although recent developments such as the latest tough IAEA report are omitted). The problem is that every factual statement about Iran comes with a rebuttal excusing Iranian actions. A secondary problem is the incoherent organization of the article, with many points addressed multiple times. This article is incurably bad. NPguy (talk) 02:16, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Anyone can add the latest IAEA report. Since no specifics have been cited, the article in general is supposed to maintain a neutral point of view, so it is only natural that differing opinions will be given if and where they exist. In discussing the latest push for sanctions, for example, it would be natural not only to cite the push for sanctions but also the opposition by Turkey (due to the Israeli nuclear program), China or Sweden (diplomatic route not being exhausted), etc. The information, where ever it comes from, just needs to be attributable.--70.225.141.35 (talk) 06:32, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Article lead POV

Coming to this article for the first time, I am shocked at the content of this article's lead. No mention of allegations of nuclear weapons development? No mentions of IAEA investigations, proposed sanctions, etc? The lead as written seems to implicitly endorse the Iranian POV that their nuclear program is purely peaceful, which does not seem to be the majority POV. Some mention of these allegations, which are of course easily sourced, needs to be in the lead as they are critical to an understanding of the topic. Oren0 (talk) 17:39, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I think the lead was written the way it is because originally this article was supposed to be about the nuclear program as opposed to the nuclear controversy. Now it covers both. Probably couldn't hurt to rewrite the lead. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 19:24, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I would still suggest that the Iran and weapons of mass destruction article would be the main article about allegations of WMD development. There could be some summary style from here which would link to the main article.--69.219.234.33 (talk) 15:12, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Article should be split

I propose this long un-readable and biased against Iran article should be split into three articles which should be inclusive. I have noted that very few Iranian sources (persian language or other wise) have been used compared with western origin sources which of course would make the article highly biased and politicized, killing the facts. Infact right now it reads more like a report on Iraq weapons of mass destruction written by American newspapers in the run up to Iraq war. As I said earlier article should be split into three distinct ones, namely: 1-Nuclear program of Iran, which shall discuss the progress and happenings and history of Iranian nuclear program, 2- Iranian nuclear weapon program, which shall discuss the history and current status of Iran's weaponization of its nuclear knowledge and finally another article for Confrontation of west and Iran over nuclear porgram which should discuss all these IAEA and UN and Western point view regarding Iran's program. It should further be noted that wikipedia has separate such articles for other countries and it is amazing that only Iran's article has been kept at a such low standard of un-readablity so that public access to facts in article is almost impossible. --119.153.10.203 (talk) 19:01, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

You've demonstrated your own bias by alleging that all western sources are biased against Iran. 'Nuff said. It's pretty easy to come to a wiki article and start throwing around propositions and accusations of bias, but I don't think anyone has the time or motivation to split this article up. I certainly wouldn't trust you to do it. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 19:22, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

This article is biased against Iran??? One reason it's such a terrible article is that every negative fact about Iran's record has had to be "balanced" by a something excusing Iran's behavior. Iran's apologists have felt the need to insert editorial commentaries throughout the text. NPguy (talk) 02:24, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

That English Wikipedia uses predominantly English sources shouldn't be any more suprising than the Farsi version using predominantly Farsi sources.

Of course, countering systemic bias, representing a worldwide view, and summarizing the article are all important. Any editor can make changes and making blanket statments isn't very constructive though. So perhaps it would be best to enumerate a specific plan, elaborate on the details of said plan, and gain a mutually acceptable WP:CONSENSUS.

-69.219.234.33 (talk) 15:29, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Why did the United States cut off fuel supply in 1979

Briefly, because Iran committed an act of war against the United States, violating international diplomatic norms by occupying the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and holding U.S. diplomats hostage. To overlook this fact and simply state that the United States abruptly cancelled nuclear fuel supply contracts is misleading and biased. NPguy (talk) 03:02, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I think your version has swung from one bias to the other. You guys should try and find some middle ground here, keeping WP:PRESERVE and WP:NPOV in mind. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 03:14, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

It could just as easily be argued that the United States violated "international diplomatic norms" or "committed an act of war" by overthrowing a democrartically-elected government and upholding an autocratic ruler against the will of the Iranian people. One wonders what the reaction would be at the Qatari embassy in the United States if they installed an unpopular dictator and secret police to harass the populace.

Anyways, it would be much better if you could work to integrate the sources which are being provided instead of instantly removing them. I have worked to integrate your edits in to the article. Thanks,--99.162.55.0 (talk) 14:10, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

The rewrite seems much better to me.--69.219.234.33 (talk) 15:22, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

There's been an ongoing dispute over why the US cut off nuclear fuel supply to Iran in 1979. There's been a lot of reverting and no real discusson. Some additional input from uninvolved parties on this highly controversial issue would be appreciated. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 22:16, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

I think it's generally accepted that the U.S. cut off nuclear fuel supply and assitance (and actively encouraged many other parties to do so as well) in response to the Iranian Revolution/the Iran Hostage Crisis.

I've had a hard time collecting what the particular issue here is, but I haven't understood why cited and attributed Iranian perceptions aren't deemed suitable for inclusion (anywhere in the article) when this is an article about the Iranian nuclear program. I think it would make perfect sense to find additional sources or reword in conformance with cited sources, but I haven't understood the major push for removal.--76.213.221.152 (talk) 23:39, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't know that it's the particular sources that aren't suitable. I think NPguys feels the article in general tends toward the Iranian viewpoint by always providing a rationale for its actions. Whether or not this is true, I think we have a version that everyone can live with, my RFC was created a little hastily, it seems. I've deleted it. In the future, it'd be nice if you guys could discuss things on the talk page after the first couple reverts rather than debate in the edit summaries. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 17:25, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Iran NPT violation claims

I'm not going to be initiating a lot of work on this article, but I noticed there is still a reference to the 2005 State Department document in the article. Since 2007-2008, the accusations seem to have fallen out of usage in US government documents. (For instance, the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review says Iran has exhibited "continued defiance of international norms and agreement" and specifically has "violated non-proliferation obligations, defied directives of the United Nations Security Council, pursued missile delivery capabilities, and resisted international efforts to resolve" its crisis.) There appears to be somewhat of a debate, with the U.S. possibly pushing for stronger international recognition and enforcement at the next NPT Review Conference.--76.213.221.152 (talk) 00:06, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

There is no change in the U.S. view that Iran violated the NPT, as well as its IAEA safeguards agreement and the relevant UN Security Council Resolutions. NPguy (talk) 02:33, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

If you have any sources for this it would be wonderful if you added it to the article. As far as I am aware, the U.S. hasn't yet convinced the IAEA Board of Governors or the UN Security Council to include this in any of the relevant resolutions which would make it a formal finding.--76.213.221.152 (talk) 05:55, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

The US doesn't really answer to the UN. You seem to think the US has to prove something to the UN before it can take action, which is demonstrably false. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 07:15, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I didn't really understand what hypothetical U.S. action is being discussed if you could clarify, and I think this is getting off-topic.

The issue here is the U.S. asserting something in a State Department report five years ago (and then allowing it to fall out of its own vernacular) doesn't make it an undisputed fact or an internationally legally binding judgement. The U.S. opinion is just given as any other opinion and if there is a debate about an assertion then it should be provided regardless of who is doing the asserting. Anyways the current version seems fine and if there are any relevant sources renewing the U.S.'s assertions or discussing hypthetical U.S. actions I think they would be more than appropriate to add.--76.213.221.152 (talk) 15:21, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

There is no formal international mechanism for determining violations of the NPT. It is left to individual parties to decide on their own. The IAEA has a related, but distinct authority to make findings of non-compliance with safeguards agreements. It found Iran in non-compliance in September 2005. While this is not logically identical to a violation of the NPT, it is reasonable to consider a violation of an NPT safeguards agreement as tantamount to a violation of the NPT itself. In particular, the NPT requires non-nuclear-weapon states such as Iran to accept IAEA safeguards on all nuclear materials. Iran's safeguards violations involved deliberate concealment of nuclear material, facilities and activities from the IAEA for a period of nearly two decades. It is hard to draw any conclusion other than that Iran violated its NPT obligation to accept safeguards.

The UN Security Council has the related authority for the maintenance of international peace and security. In Resolution 1887, the Council "Emphasizes that a situation of non-compliance with non-proliferation obligations shall be brought to the attention of the Security Council, which will determine if that situation constitutes a threat to international peace and security, and emphasizes the Security Council’s primary responsibility in addressing such threats." While not addressing Iran explicitly, it is directly relevant to the case of Iran, since Iran's safeguards agreement is a non-proliferation obligation. NPguy (talk) 03:39, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

"There is no formal international mechanism for determining violations of the NPT. It is left to individual parties to decide on their own." Exactly. The U.S. can make one conclusion on whatever rationale it would like (some of which I believe you explain), and the rest of the world can make a completely separate decision on absolutely whatever rationale it would like. The UN Security Council has the authority to become involved, but usually does not have a responsibility to adjudicate treaty violations. Egypt, South Korea, and other nations have had similar safeguards violations, each of which is resolved somewhat differently, so a debate begins to form with cries of special treatment or a history of discrimination.

I think it would be best for the article to present some of the current procedures (the UNSEC mention), some of the views for and against NPT violation by Iran in particular, and then mention some efforts towards a more comprehensive approach to the problem (such as that proposed by Acton). For reference, Pierre Goldschmidt, a former Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Safeguards at the International Atomic Energy Agency, has also made similar proposals for strenghtening the nonproliferation regime and procedures through an automatic and more comprehensive approach which is nation neutral.--76.213.221.152 (talk) 16:00, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I just did a major revision of this section. I deleted several paragraphs that were not directly relevant and rearranged the remaining text into a more logical order. Some of the deleted text may fit well in some other section, but because the article is already much too long and repetitive I did not try to find another home for any of it. I hope others will agree that the section is clearer, more concise and coherent. I would welcome comments, corrections and constructive copy-edits. But I hope others will set aside at least temporarily the temptation to engage in edit wars. If there are disagreements with the approach I've taken, let's discuss here first. NPguy (talk) 18:10, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

I saw this here after I made some recent edits to the article. The section seems clearer, more concise and coherent. I am fairly happy with this current version.

The one thing that there appears to have been some back and forth on is the use of conclude with respect to the 2005 U.S. State Report. That this set this as as the 2005 U.S. policy is not questioned, but the use of the word "conclude" would imply that it is either appearing at the end of the report or that it is formally bringing something to a decision or settlement. The report itself places the relevant text in "analysis" or "findings" sections, so I think it would be appropriate to describe this as a U.S. interpretation, reasoning, or finding.--76.251.247.83 (talk) 02:29, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I think "found" implies a statement of fact, while "conclusion" reflects a judgment and is therefore more appropriate.

I also think the final part of this section, which deals with Article IV, is deficient. While it refers to "rights" to peaceful use of nuclear energy, which are recognized by NPT Article IV, it does not cite arguments directly related to the NPT. For example, there is also the point that Article IV rights are to be implemented "in conformity with Articles I and II," to which the 2000 NPT Review Conference also added (as a matter of policy - not law or legal interpretation) Article III. This directly relates Iran's safeguards violations to its peaceful use rights.

The Article IV is actually more controversial than whether Iran violated Article III, which most observers agree that it did. The argument by Michael Spies is defective, because it misses the fact that "diversion" includes failure to declare material that a country is required to place under safeguards, something Iran clearly did. Alexei Arbatov doesn't even address the Article III question. NPguy (talk) 21:32, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't really have much interest in evaluating or debating the differing interpretations of Article III compliance in the article, but to me it would seem the process determining compliance is somewhat subjective and ambiguous, and this is why there have been various proposals for how to strengthen the process.

I'm glad you acknowledge there is a discussion about the Article IV issues as well. I think the NPT section might be the best place in the article for such a discussion. I think the best thing to do would be to just document and describe the different positions. So the section might contain Iranian assertions about Article IV rights, some discussion about necessary conformance with Articles I and II (and III), and some brief reactions.--76.251.247.83 (talk) 00:57, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

External links

There are far too many here, as the hidden message says there is already enough and no need for more. But some links are already far too much. Some are news articles which can be cited in the text, some (youtube) have no source on who the videos are from. Only links that further reading should be there. One on the history is good (no need for several), one quick timeline, some analysis, etc.Lihaas (talk) 21:00, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

So be bold and fix it. This problem with external links has been going on for awhile now, but I'm not about to start edit warring over it. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 21:55, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I've cut a bit but its still too long, i dont want to get into an edit war about what goes and stays so i though we discuss it further first.Lihaas (talk) 23:30, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I just have the page watchlisted, I don't pay attention to the external links. They're mostly added via driveby's. I don't think you'll run into any problems if you decide to hack away at it. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 01:58, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

^232-234: presstv.ir This source should be clarified to show an Iranian State Company makes the statements. Links number is still too much. Iran's efforts with Brazil and Turkey could be one sub. 98.207.179.14 (talk) 04:47, 19 May 2010 (UTC)cAnight

im sorry, i dont understand this statement. if its just the citation number then be WP:Bold to alter it more suitably. what about the iran and brazil/turkey thing though?Lihaas (talk) 16:16, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Disputed sources/edit warring

There seems to be an edit war going on with these edits: [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] and the requisite reverts.

According to this editor [15] the previous edits were POV too.

I have already asked the editor responsible on his talk page why he believes the sources are unreliable for that text and he gave no reason so i'm asking this again (even though he has already gone about WP:3RR). The same editor removed text from the Iran section without citing any reason whatsoever which is POV and vandalism. Then he removed sourced info to add his own source and called the readdition of the sourced info redundant. If he would like to explain why he did this and what he thinks is controversial he can work on getting consensus here through discussion first instead of continuing with the POV edits.Lihaas (talk) 17:12, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I've already answered that those sources are unreliable for that purpose and redirected you to discussing the issue in the RS noticeboard. Please don't readd questionable content until you get consensus about it and try to keep Wikipedia:Recentism out of this article. Wikipedia is not a newspaper.--Nutriveg (talk) 18:32, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Now another user keep readding the same problematic text without discussion. Al Jazeera is not a reliable source for that purpose, neither the Libyan website (Al Manar), most of the text is interpretation made by a single biased editor, this is an ongoing issue where opinions and facts are still being discussed and not very clear, the text is unbalanced towards Iranian POV (saying how Iran is collaborating and other countries not), excludes many countries positions (like China and Russia) and is redundant when it repeats a paragraph that was already rewritten. So stop readding that very same problematic edit. Get consensus about it in the talk page before!--Nutriveg (talk) 13:14, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

The RS noticeboard said the sources were OK (for the purpose they are currently used) and about 4 people have restored the info. (I removed the few sentences which were using the questionable sources in an improper way.) You are the only one removing it, which means it is up to you to argue the content is bad here. You can't just keep unilaterally removing it because you think you are right and everyone else is wrong. --ThaddeusB-public (talk) 16:00, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

P.S. You are just blind reverting, removing text that is not the least bit questionable (such as that sourced to PBS) instead of working on fixing the problem, whereas others have at least attempted to work toward a mutually acceptable solution. I'm sorry, but you actions are clearly in the wrong here. --ThaddeusB-public (talk) 16:02, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

The discussion on the RS noticeboard reached a consensus they're not, only one editor said Al Jazeera was, but he was silent after other opposing views were presented.

Until now, no consensus was reached on the talk page about the changes added by this edit, so the previous version remains] until that change is agreed.

That citation of a PBS interview is WP:SYNTH and WP:Recentism. It's an interview transcript, so not editorial reviewed, unreliable as well. It's also redundant since there is already a similar analysis of the facts.

This issue is mostly ongoing news by now and doesn't deserve further attention until there's something more concrete about it, like Iran (not) submitting it to the IAEA until the deadline (Monday) or some important country making their final statement about it.

You're the one just reverting instead of addressing the points already mentioned here. I'm not the one proposing a change to the article.---Nutriveg (talk) 16:50, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean Nutriveg? At the RS board, there was only 2 person who replied to you (at the time of your edit) and only one person saying it's best if Al Jazeera is double checked. How did you take out of it that "The discussion on the RS noticeboard reached a consensus they're not, only one editor said Al Jazeera was, but he was silent after other opposing views were presented"? The third person who said anything replied that (in paraphrase): there is no reason to doubt that Al Jazeera is an unreliable sources.130.126.15.44 (talk) 18:07, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

That's your interpretation, mine is the other said a better news source should be used, so improve it using other sources instead of just reverting to the same questionable sources!--Nutriveg (talk) 18:15, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

After the latest comments I reviewed my interpretation of the RS discussion: You can use Al Jazeera but only if attributed like "According to Al Jazeera ...", so it's better to still find another source instead of mess the text with unnecessary attributions.--Nutriveg (talk) 18:47, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

No such thing was said, what was actually said was "The Iranian media is subject to strict censorship. Can be used in order to show the position of the Iranian regime but always attribute. Al Jazeera is as a general rule to be regarded as reliable and doesn't need attributing." (bold added). The stuff originally sourced to the Iranian media has largely been removed, yet you continue to blind revert away Al Jazeera and other reliable sources. As you, yourself admit, the information is available elsewhere so if Al Jazeera bothers you so much, change it (don't delete it), but such a change is not actually required. --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:20, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

You're quoting just one user opinion

Metropolitan asked for other sources "one should be able to refer to other media sources to confirm whether Al Jazeera got the story right"

Wehwalt said it "was best to attribute inline".

Dlabtot had COI.

That change in the text has many other problems beyond using Al Jazeera, as pointed above, but you ignored that refusing to address those problems, repeatedly making that same change, with the same problems without getting consensus over it.--Nutriveg (talk) 19:41, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

LOL, if you take quotes out of context and ignore opinions you don't like, you can reach any conclusion. Saying it wouldn't hurt to add another source is hardly the same as saying the source is unreliable. Furthermore, it is you, not me, who is blind reverting (or as you call it "ignoring"). I have made several attempts (as did previous editors) to meet your concerns, yet you blind revert back to the version with no information every time. I'm sorry, but that is not how we do things. You don't to unilaterally decide what is acceptable and revert back to your preferred reason over and over again. You must at least attempt to reach a mutually acceptable version by making incremental changes, not just removing (somewhat) different text over and over again to get back to the version you like. --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:56, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Can't even say the same about you when you made that interpretation based solely in one quote.

Improvements should be made from a stable version, the last one which there was consensus over it. You only made minor edits after a major change made by a single editor that had many problems that were mentioned here (WP:SYNTH, WP:Recentism, unreliable sources, WP:NPOV, redundancy) while you tried to make like it was only one problem (unreliable source) with only one source (iranian). While you also misrepresented a discussion in the RS noticeboard.

Your edits so far were useless as possible. I may edit this article again from that stable version, but as I pointed above this issue is ongoing news that can completely change in 3 days so I'll better wait while the Wikipedia article is protected in this WP:recentism trashy version.

Hope to see you here on Monday the deadline for Iran to submit the deal.--Nutriveg (talk) 20:27, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Do you want to play semantic games, or actually discuss things? Your statement implied strongly that you were referring to that quote, so I reproduced it here since you seemed to me mistaken about its content. That is all.

So, what you have on the RS message board is two people who explicitly state Al Jazeera is OK and one that says other sources could be used. How you twist that into a consensus that it isn't OK, I have no idea.

My edit was not minor - I removed every sentence which was sourced to the Iranian media that wasn't explicitly Iran. Those were the only ones where there was a legitimate dispute over the reliability of the source. As to the alledged "many other issues": SYNTH doesn't even remotely apply - I don't know where you got that idea from. Recentism is a somewhat legitimate complaint, but since the material is notable, the correct way to deal with it is to split the article into subarticles. Just removing the text does nothing to help Wikipedia. The attribution concern has been addressed. And I have no idea what you are talking about when you say the material is redundant. To what exactly? The two sentences you left behind?

Finally, as has been explained to you at least 5 times, consensus exists already. Everyone who has touched the article or commented on the situation has disagreed with your position that none of the material belongs (minus the few sentences removed b/c of poor sourcing). That IS consensus for inclusion. We don't mandate votes before content can be added, but rather work through a process of implicit consensus. --ThaddeusB (talk) 20:42, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

It's not my problem if you can read only what you want.

My expressed problems were detailed above you didn't address them but only focused on the obvious Iranian media stupid thing, deleting a couple phrases, unable to find better sources or rewrite the article in a more balanced less interpretative version.

Reverting and going away is not a consensus process that can only be defined by a discussion on the talk page were people reach an agreement, consensus is not a number of people.

"the status quo reigns until a consensus is established to make a change". You are the one supporting the change to the previous version.

I won't discuss ongoing news or keep explaining how bad is your interpretation. See you on Monday.--Nutriveg (talk) 21:04, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I think that it should have been pretty clear to you that your words weren't the least bit clear and that you needed to explain what you meant, but as usual it looks like you are just going to insist you are right and everyone else is wrong. I focused on the sourcing, because you focused on the sourcing - if it wasn't your main concern, why did you open a thread on the RS message board and revert with a comment about bad sources (multiple times)? You most certainly do need to "keep explaining things" since you have yet to state why you think it is redundant, synthesis, unbalanced, or even why it is recentism (merely being recent doesn't disqualify it). You do realize that simple stating something doesn't make it true, right?

In regards to your "on Monday" comment, if that means you plan to resume the edit war as soon as the protection expires, I strongly urge you to reconsider your threat. Such behavior will almost certainly result it a rapid block. You may have bullied away the last two people who disagreed with you, but your immature and aggressive behavior isn't going to work on me. --ThaddeusB (talk) 22:14, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

If you can't read I said Monday because that's when Iran is expected to submit (or not) the deal to the IEAE so other countries can finally make some concrete statements about it, so I won't discuss ongoing news.--Nutriveg (talk) 14:51, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

The article is too big to follow the edit war, since it is so slow to load each revision. The current text needs a copy edit at a minimum. As currently drafted there's no reason for the "reactions" subsection, and there's an obvious redundancy in what analysts are cited as saying. NPguy (talk) 03:40, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I have removed the obviously redundant sentence (hopefully that was non-controversial enough to warrant editing through full protection). Apparently, it got accidentally duplicated at some point of the EW. As to the other part, if you are saying there is no need for the word "reactions" settign apart the text, then I agree with that. --ThaddeusB (talk) 12:09, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

That change is controverse because you're further editing (making minimal changes to) exactly the same paragraph discussed above and completely removed as redundant (there's already analysis on the text), WP:synth, unreliable source (an interview transcript not editorial reviewed) and undue (doesn't reflect general analysis of the issue). Please don't violate the article protection again, you have already made too much damage to this article, including forcing it's protection, so now wait and settle your WP:Recentism.--Nutriveg (talk) 14:57, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Your post makes no sense. All I did was remove the duplication that you yourself complained about. Do you really want me to revert back to re-include the duplication that YOU complained about? I suspect not, which means you are just playing games, not trying to improve the article.

Also, please refrain from accusing people of "damaging" the article just because they disagree with your POV. No one is right all the time, including you, and the sooner you realize that sooner we can actually do something productive here. --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:04, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

You edited exactly the text under dispute between you and me. Your edit minor changed that phrase keeping the same problems. It's not the same edit I made (and you reverted) you edited it by yourself. Unfortunately you see yourself above the protection of that page and don't understand what article protection means, so I just ask you to don't violate the article protection again to avoid further problems.--Nutriveg (talk) 19:09, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I "changed" it by removing the duplicate sentence that YOU objected to! Are just playing semantic games here or do you honestly want me to revert the duplicate sentence back in? --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:27, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I removed the paragraph because of the problems with that paragraph (explained above) that should belong anywhere in the article! You slighly changed that text, just before the article protection and later moved it to section head. This is the last stable version of the article we can work from, not the one you changed before the article protection.-Nutriveg (talk) 19:35, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I'll take your answer to mean you want to play games. If you object to the material once, you obviously don't want it twice! Thus, you are obviously just wikilawyering when you say I shouldn't have removed one of the two instances because it was under dispute. --ThaddeusB (talk) 20:05, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Another copy edit needed. In this sentence "The deal came despite US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying there like chance for success without sanction," the word "like" should be "was." NPguy (talk) 12:56, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Try to find a source that says that first, and not making interpretations based other interpretations based on añ out of context phrase that has no reference of its actual context.--Nutriveg (talk) 13:13, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

One the protection expires, I will be happy to copy edit the whole section. Nutriveg already went ballistic about my first non-controversial edit, so I won't "provoke" him by making further non-controversial edits. --ThaddeusB (talk) 14:16, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Firstly, why is Al jazeera biased? that is your opinion. it is used across wikipedia and on the news pages. Secondly, i dont know if you have another al manar at hand but this is not Libyan. If jpost and ynet have any credence here these certainly do.

At any rate, if "the status quo reigns until a consensus is established to make a change". then the status quo is the edit to include it until we get a consensus. You have violeted 3RR already

So as per the ascertation that the status quo prevails till consensus the original will stand before your removal. and these are your words

Furthermore, so far the talk page at the RS noticeboard on Al Jazeera is 5-1 in favour. Press TV is at a neutral point saying it can be used with other affirmation. and Al Manar (the most controversial) has only 1 response which doesnt say much. So all you claims that the WP:RS said it was unreliable have held no water. Lihaas (talk) 22:40, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I looked at the State Department web site and for other english language press sources for Clinton saying what Al Jazeera attributes to her, and didn't find anything. I believe the views attributed to Clinton are plausible - so I see no reason to delete the text in question - but my preference would be to cite a press source that is geopolitically connected to the speaker (Western) rather than a Middle Eastern press source that might filter Clinton's views through a regional perspective. Rather than edit warring the text, or taking abstract positions on the talk page, why not keep the text and look for additional sources? NPguy (talk) 22:23, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Good, brilliant. I agree. Its a good agreement. no harm in adding a fact tag and if nothing comes in due course remove it, better than taking it all out on a whim. Has the page opened up yet?

I must see NPguy we had a differences but here and in the Tehran article we're working along now.v Lihaas (talk) 06:22, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

This article desperately needs split

A 260+K the article will take several minutes to load on a slow connection, and may not even load properly at all on older computers. (See WP:PAGESIZE.) Even on my fast cable connection, it takes a full minute to load. Please split some material off into more narrowly focused articles rather than trying to cram everything into one mega article.

Thanks, ThaddeusB (talk) 18:10, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I'll do this in a while. By largest sections first i guess till we scale it to less than 100k? (perhaps the controversial section above can be split off.

(well, when it opens up)Lihaas (talk) 22:46, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking of moving the whole history section to "History of nuclear program of Iran", which would go along way toward fixing the problem by itself. Having a separate "history of" article is quite common. What do you think? --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:21, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Yep, sounds good. Half the page should go.

Although the uranium exchange may not be history exactly. Maybe a politican aspect of it? I see the political section is long too, maybe we can move that away because while it concerns the programme it is beyond just the programme and would be fitting from 2 angles thus more appropriate a split off. "Nuclear power as a political issue"/"views on Iran's nuclear power program"/"Uranium exchange" could alternatively go on to a "Politics of Iranian nuclear programme" page?Lihaas (talk) 16:11, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that this is the best solution. The problem is not that the article contains too much good information; it's that it contains too much repetitive argumentation. It's incoherent, and its parts are no more coherent than the whole. But if anything the history is the more coherent piece, despite its selectiveness and recentism. Perhaps a better approach would be to keep the history part under the current title, and put the various debates and positions into a separate article, something like "Controversy over the nuclear program of Iran." I know "controversy" is a wikipedia cop-out, but given how bad those parts of the article are maybe that's the best we can do without wholesale editing. NPguy (talk) 22:29, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so 3 people with 3 different splits. History, controversy, and politics. All good options. But who's picking straws?Lihaas (talk) 06:19, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

All may be appropriate, especially for an article of this length. We should just keep in mind preserving appropriate content (whether in another article) and using an appropriate summary style. I think it might make sense to start with the History since it is the longest and appears first in the article, but any of them would seem fine.--70.236.71.25 (talk) 05:35, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so we stand at History 2, Politics 1, controversy 1. I think i'll cut off history then before this goes on longer.Lihaas (talk) 11:53, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

If you split it the wrong way you will end up needing multiple cross references. I can see pulling out a number of smaller articles from this one. One could be on Iran and the IAEA; another on Iran and the UN Security Council; another on the Tehran Research Reactor; another on Iran and the NPT. This article is about five times as long as an easily readible one, so a two-way split will not be enough. NPguy (talk) 14:03, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

"Uranium exchange" sub-section seems accurate and NPOV now

and I'll remove tag soon unless someone offers good reason(s) not to.Haberstr (talk) 17:40, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

well, since the RS noticeboard debate was inconclusive im going to back the sources and some more. But what do you think is NPOV about it? lets discuss so we can withdrawLihaas (talk) 09:09, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

NPOV is always a subjective matter, but in controversial matters, in my humble opinion, NPOV means good faith provision of the various major perspectives, with 'major' determined by international and not just Western mainstream press coverage of the matter. There are now a diversity of international views. The sub-section's not "U.S/'the West'"-centric in how the exchange is being characterized and narrated, but that perspective is given a chance to provide its perspective. The U.S. & Russian 'Brazil will fail' predictions -- which were unimportant, incorrect, confusing to readers and seemed to be piling on -- were deleted.Haberstr (talk) 18:47, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the first paragraph has been reformed back to its unnecessarily-difficult-to-understand old self. Here is my version:

On 17 May 2010, Iran, Brazil and Turkey announced an agreement that would move about half of Iran's low-enriched uranium abroad for further processing into fuel rods which would then be returned to Iran for use in the Tehran Research Reactor.[224] The proposal was welcomed by Arab leaders,[225][226][227] China and, cautiously, by Russia.[228][229] In addition, French Prime Minister called the agreement a "positive step" toward resolving the Iran nuclear program dispute, if Iran were to cease uranium enrichment altogether.[230] EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton played down the agreement, saying it was a step in the right direction but did not go far enough and left questions unanswered.[231]

And here is the current version:

On 17 May 2010 the Foreign Ministers of Iran, Brazil and Turkey issued a declaration on the exchange of 1200 kgs of Iran's low-enriched uranium - which would be held in Turkey - for fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor.[224] A week later, Iran conveyed its support for the proposed fuel exchange to the IAEA and asked the IAEA to inform the United States, Russia and France in order to begin negotiation of a formal agreement.[225] The proposal was welcomed by Arab leaders,[226][227][228] China and, cautiously, by Russia.[229][230] France's Prime Minister called the agreement a "positive step" toward resolving the Iran nuclear program dispute, if Iran were to cease uranium enrichment altogether.[231] EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton played down the agreement, saying it was a step in the right direction but did not go far enough and left questions unanswered.[232] U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the proposal had "a number of deficiencies," including Iran's intention to continue enriching uranium to high levels.[233]

Is "issued a declaration" really necessary? That may be technically accurate diplomatic language, but Wikipedia is an encyclopedia for the general public, and the term in the media is "announced an agreement." The second sentence is unnecessary; it concerns a technical, red-tape matter, and is not 'news'. Oh well; the specificity about Turkey is fine, and the final three paragraphs (as I revised them) have not been changed.Haberstr (talk) 19:03, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia generally recommends using the most common English-language terminology which is found in reliable sources. In this case, Google news gives the following feedback:

News query	Results
iran turkey brazil deal	5020
iran turkey brazil agreement	2950
iran turkey brazil declaration	706
iran turkey brazil announcement	417
iran turkey brazil accord	380
iran turkey brazil pact	221
iran turkey brazil pledge	25

--70.236.71.25 (talk) 02:48, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

I reverted to "issued a declaration" for accuracy. There is no deal yet, only Iran's announcement of its willingness to accept one. But the key parties to a "deal" (the IAEA, Russia, France and the United States) have not yet agreed to anything.

I also restored the NPOV tag, because of the large number of added commentaries supposedly supporting the proposal. This gives undue weight to those welcoming it, compared to those who are skeptical. I think we could do with a fraction of the positive commentaries and one or two skeptical ones, or dispense with the commentaries altogether.NPguy (talk) 13:59, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

On the first issue, the common perception in the sources is that there was a "deal" reached between Brazil, Turkey, and Iran. I don't think this insinuates that the "deal" is binding on those who are not party to the "deal". I don't really see why it matters if it is called a deal, agreement, declaration, etc. but it is our goal to the reader to present the most common name which appears. If we would also like to include the formal name (which I believe is "Joint Declaration by Iran, Turkey and Brazil") we could source it in for completeness from one of the places where the text appears [16].

On the other issue, the tag should stay until all the editors are happy. I think some commentaries are appropriate to gaining an understanding of the opinion surrounding the proposal, and I think specifically that the letter mishap provides an insight in to the mindset and complexity of diplomacy. I could see slightly pruning the other commentary and/or replacing a few commentators if others perceive a problem, but some roles (such as IAEA Director General or UN Secretary General are notable positions can't be swapped very interchangably).--70.236.71.25 (talk) 23:51, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

I removed excessive listing of 'pro-agreement' countries, and removed POV tag. But if you disagree, restore it. However, remember we don't tag every sub-section that isn't perfectly balanced. To me, the problems that remain with the section seem to be 'paragraph unity' and some incoherence, not POV.Haberstr (talk) 04:48, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

some links

As a result of the resolution vote: [17] + [18] + Mottaki: France N-talk offer, positive Iran sanctions, 'no beginning for talks' (Lihaas (talk) 09:06, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Sugar-coating the Shah

There has been a series of recent edits that has the effect of criticizing the democratically elected Mossadegh regime and removing criticism of the Shah, who was put in place with a U.S.-supported coup. It's not my area of expertise so I won't attempt to revise/correct, but I wanted to draw attention to these edits, which appear to raise WP:POV problems. NPguy (talk) 16:44, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Insufficiently justified deletions are an auto-revert for me (and a lot of other people). I think if you possess the expertise to recognize such a problem, than you are well within your rights to engage in the bold/discuss/revert cycle. I haven't been reviewing the edits recently on this article as I just plain do not know enough about it to make informed decisions. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 21:25, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I added more sources for the text. Summarization is fine, but there is no reason to completely gloss over the issue.--71.156.84.246 (talk) 00:42, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Are these quotes helpful?

Can we establish consensus- are these quotes a useful addition to this article, or would the article be better without them? -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 19:33, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

First off thanks for helping out FisherQueen. In my view they are very legitimate to use. Celso Amorim was one of the participants in the talk with Iran (Iran + Turkey + Brazil). The first quote is from 2008, Celso speaking about the Bush adm. stance on the conflict regarding the Nuclear program of Iran, since this article is named.. Nuclear program of Iran I dont see a reason why this powerful quote should be removed. Its important because it gives some history on this subject.

The next quote should also be added in my opinion, since Adorim was part of the trialteral talks his views are important regarding how the U.S. approached the "Teheran decleration" (thats the formal name for the deal Turkey, Iran and Brazil struck in april 2010).

The third quote is also useable on this page because Brazil has a huge part on this conflict regarding being a mediator. Their view on why they voted 'no' on the UN security council meeting is therefore important and should be added on this page I think. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MUCHERS22 (talk • contribs)

• No, they don't appear to be helpful. The quotes don't add to what is already a very long and cumbersome article. WP is not a soapbox and third-party quotes should not be used (or reasonably seen to be used) as a substitute for an editor's own opinion. These particular quotes could be summarized into a short, factual statements, without the quote being reproduced. Wikipeterproject (talk) 00:01, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Ok I will break those down quotes down. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MUCHERS22 (talk • contribs) 07:29, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree strongly that this article is already too long.

I agree with the previous comment that this article is already too long. New material should be not only relevant but critical to understanding the issue. I don't think any of these quotes meet that test. The first quote is from 2008 and is completely irrelevant in a discussion of the Tehran declaration of May 2010. The second and third are relevant, but add little to the simple declaratory sentence "Turkey and Brazil criticized the sanctions proposal" a few paragraphs above. I actually kept the second quote and put it there. It certainly doesn't need to be duplicated. NPguy (talk) 03:16, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

So MUCHERS22, when are you going to "break those quotes down," as you promised earlier? NPguy (talk) 01:49, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

AIPAC

AIPAC is a lobbying organization in the United States. It strongly supports Israel, but it is an American organization and represents an element of U.S. opinion, not an example of Israeli views. It was one of many U.S. groups supporting the latest U.S. sanctions legislation, which had overwhelming political support in Congress. To single out as a supporter of this legislation, and to do so in a section on Israeli views, is wrong on both counts. Hence, I am deleting it, again. NPguy (talk) 03:16, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

AIPAC carry out a certain politics in which are in line to that of the israeli goverment, they are maybe the most powerful lobby organisation in the U.S. and plays a huge part into which politics the U.S. seeks/pursue in the middle east, especially the israel-palestine conflict. They are one of the most fundamental voices for sanctions on Iran, we could go back to the Iran Lybia Sanctions act in 1996 where they also played a huge role in instigating these sanctions. With that being said I dont see a reason why AIPAC shouldnt be covered. Also naming a organisation isnt to singling out anyone, I am just stating facts and very important one since they got huge power to influence. So, I think this AIPAC text should be covered in the 'israeli' views or in the 'american' views. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MUCHERS22 (talk • contribs) 06:59, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure AIPAC supported the latest U.S. sanctions against Iran, but it is not the reason the sanctions law passed. Saying that the "powerful Jewish lobby" supported these sanctions is therefore profoundly misleading. It also plays into Iran's claim that opposition to its nuclear program is a zionist conspiracy, a political tactic Iran uses to distract attention from concerns over its nuclear program. NPguy (talk) 02:30, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Of course it not the reason that the sanctions passed, BUT they(AIPAC) has a huge part in it - if you know the history of these sanctions you cant deny that, its one of the biggest groups pushing for sanctions and therefore should be added on this page.

Of course its a political stance from AIPAC otherwhise the AIPAC themselves would push for a nuclear free middle east in general, not just singling out one specific country.

So either I think this should be added in the "US view" or the "israeli view". —Preceding unsigned comment added by MUCHERS22 (talk • contribs) 07:05, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

AIPAC's view is neither the Israeli view nor the U.S. (i.e. U.S. government) view. To insinuate that the "powerful Jewish lobby" defines either country's view is - to put it mildly - inappropriate. NPguy (talk) 01:47, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Well it is an american organisation represent the israeli goverment so I think it would be best if it were in the "US views"-section. Like I said, its a very powerful lobby and a huge part of their work is about Iran and especially the Iran sanctions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MUCHERS22 (talk • contribs) 07:12, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

For the record, I agree with NPguy here. Any mention, no matter how phrased, of AIPAC's support for the sanction legislation in Nuclear program of Iran article is inappropriate, on WP:UNDUE WEIGHT grounds. The only situation where a mention of AIPAC may be appropriate if one can find good sources which explicitly say that AIPAC's support for the legislation was crucial for its passage. Otherwise singling out AIPAC is inappropriate. In fact, every evidence we do have indicates that AIPAC's support played little role in passing the sanctions legislation - which had overwhelming support from both parties in the U.S. Congress and from the national security experts. Nsk92 (talk) 19:48, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Like I told you earlier before, this part is called "Eu/US view", since Aipac is an american organization it therefore is a view represented by a US organization. This statement by Aipac doesnt have any explicit connection to a certain sanction or to a certain legislation to begin with. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MUCHERS22 (talk • contribs) 07:22, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Edit warring again

Despite having been sanctioned in the past, MUCHERS22 is at it again, insisting on inclusion of inappropriate material. NPguy (talk) 02:28, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I have left a warning regarding edit warring at User talk:MUCHERS22. If he continues to re-insert edits that do not have consensus, a 3RR or AN/I report may become appropriate Nsk92 (talk) 10:47, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

"inclusion of inappropriate material" - According to who? Yourself? —Preceding unsigned comment added by MUCHERS22 (talk • contribs) 12:56, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

On the question of "Urgency"

Why is there an entire subheading dedicated to this based solely on the sensationalist quote of a guy who said that Iraq had an active WMD program and was as little as one year away from fabricating a nuclear weapon? —Preceding unsigned comment added by All2humanuk (talk • contribs) 18:02, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

*Iran. Yeah...this is kinda too early to tell if this quote will have the impact necessary to be encyclopedic. Wikipedia is not a news outlet, afterall. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 19:20, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Others have argued for attacking Iranian nuclear facilities, but I think Bolton is the only on who has argued for attacking Bushehr. Most see enrichment as the proliferation threat and nuclear power as a minor worry. Bolton apparently never reconciled to the dominant view accepting Iran's right to a peaceful nuclear power program. NPguy (talk) 02:38, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Former UN nuclear chief calls Iran's program a 'threat'

relevant? Wikifan12345 (talk) 01:01, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

"Japan option" for Iran?

I ran across an interesting piece, which contains this interesting statement: "Many observers believe that Iran ultimately will adopt the “Japan option” — possessing the capability to construct quickly a nuclear weapon if sufficiently threatened." Now if many observers believe this, then it should be represented in the article, the question is just where. Here are a few more sources on this (another name for it is apparently "nuclear latency") 1, 2, 3 --Dailycare (talk) 19:14, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

"An Israeli attack would bolster al-Qaeda’s propaganda that the United States is at war with Islam. Washington currently is at war in five Muslim countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia)." Not a WP:RS. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 19:28, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

The idea that Iran is not immediately seeking weapons but is instead seeking a Japan-like capability is (a) respectable and (b) written about by knowledgeable experts. It is addressed obliquely in the quote from Mark Fitzpatrick on a "latent" nuclear weapons capability. As I've pointed out repeatedly, this article is much to long, repetitive and incoherent, so I do not encourage additions. Better to edit out the redundancy and reorganize into a more coherent form. NPguy (talk) 02:35, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

I was just saying that the source we were given isn't reliable. If we include the "Japan option," we'll need another. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 15:17, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

What do you think of the CSIS source? Cheers, --Dailycare (talk) 18:56, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't know about their "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy," but an initial look and the fact it has a wiki article suggests it's reliable. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 22:28, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

In this case, perhaps we should use a slightly different standard, since discussion of the "Japan option" is a matter of analysis, judgment and opinion rather than fact and accuracy. But either way I agree that the CSIS source appears reputable. NPguy (talk) 17:06, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Brazil's FM statement

I have reverted[19] addition by User:MUCHERS22 of a pagragraph re Brazil's FM statement. I see two problems with this paragraph. First, it is sourced to an Iranian governmental newsagency - a biased and unreliable source for reporting about statements made by others regarding the Iranian nuclear arms dispute. Second, the inclusion of the paragraph represents a WP:UNDUE WEIGHT problem: there are hundreds of statements, both pro and con Iran's position, that have been made by various diplomats and governmental officials over the last several years. There would need to be a clear and compelling reason for including an extensive paragraph re this particular statement. Nsk92 (talk) 18:10, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

A quick glance at this seems to indicate there's nothing really new. Another government picking a side on the issue. At this point the article does not have a list of countries' stances on the matter, so if we were to include this bit from Brazil, it would have to be particularly significant, and I don't see that it is. I can't comment on the source, but something like this is more than likely to have been reported by multiple sources, so I think it would be a trivial matter to find a reliable source, and move the discussion on. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 18:39, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly: there would have to be something particularly significant about Brazil's FM statement (assuming that Iran has accurately reported it) to merit its inclusion in the article, and that does not appear to be the case here. However, MUCHERS22 has again jammed his edit to the article, [20]. Since I am already at 3 reverts with him today, I did not revert his last edit, but I did report him at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring. Nsk92 (talk) 18:49, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

MUCHERS22 has done this before, making a nuisance of himself by insisting on poorly worded edits with various hidden biases, such as giving undue weight to marginal actors or (in this case) citing an article that seems to be selectively quoting the speaker. Enough already! NPguy (talk) 02:07, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

He's gotten a 60 days block yesterday. Nsk92 (talk) 04:57, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Tehran Nuclear Declaration

There seems to be no representation in this section of the view that the so-called "Tehran Nuclear Declaration" does not describe a "fuel swap" in a complete sense but rather a deposit of LEU whilst another batch of uranium is enriched and turned into fuel rods in Russia and France respectively. The declaration seems not to transfer ownership of Iran's LEU at any point, even after receipt of fuel rods from France. This view was expressed at the time and seems to have been the underlying reason for the cool reception from the USA and EU, although there is little media coverage of it. Also a longer discussion of the "equivalent" October 2009 Vienna Group draft accord (as far as it is known) would provide some helpful background, and might usefully be compared with the "Tehran Nuclear Declaration". By the way, the phrase "Tehran Declaration" or "Tehran Nuclear Declaration" is highly confusing since there was also the EU-3 "Tehran Declaration". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Literatim (talk • contribs) 07:23, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for splitting this article

This article is much too long, and the level of detail is inconsistent over time and from topic to topic. It seems to me that there are a few topics that could be split from the main article, including "Iran and the IAEA" and "Iran and the NPT." This would allow several long sections to be pulled out of this article and replaces with short summaries. Before I embark on a project like this, I'd appreciate the reaction of other editors who watch this article. NPguy (talk) 02:02, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I have no objections so long as the summaries are neutral and all information is preserved. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 02:13, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I've started construction on a user subpage User:NPguy/Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Comments/suggestions welcome. NPguy (talk) 03:40, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Ahmadinejad admits centrifuges hit by software problem

http://www.rferl.org/content/ahmadinejad_centrifuges_software_problem/2234106.html

Where do we wedge this into the article? Hcobb (talk) 21:32, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

is Bushehr online yet?

article seems to say that the plant is opening in the future but refers to a time frame in the past. This should probably be updated. romnempire (talk) 02:15, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Merger proposal

Although this article is too long and needs some subsection to be spin-off, I propose to merge (more precisely, redirect) Nuclear energy in Iran here. It is currently one-sentence stub and does not deserve to be a separate article. After merging it would be worth to considered, if any information from this article could be moved there. Beagel (talk) 09:16, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

making it a redirect to Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant would be better imho. That has a link at the top pointing here anyway. DS Belgium (talk) 13:21, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Iran is causing the sale of missile defense systems to Arab states

It's not bad breath that the Arabs are seeking to defend themselves against. It's Iran's nuclear program, as the LM exec pointed out in my edit that got reverted. Hcobb (talk) 04:09, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "bad breath," but the reason it was reverted was a question of relevancy to this topic. First off, statements from a Lockheed Martin executive need to be taken with a little grain of salt on this. He's not a foreign policy analyst or expert, he's an executive in a company that wants its weapons sold. Second, it isn't incredibly relevant to the topic of Iran's nuclear program. Iran's program is in no way changed by neighbors possibly buying some defensive weapons. If we have an analyst or expert saying this is triggering a regional arms race, then we might have something worth putting in the article. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 04:14, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I think the point the user was making was that the deployment of missile defense systems by other Arabs was a result of Iran's nuclear program. This sounds somewhat counter-intuitive to me, but it's irrelevant unless there's a reputable source to back it up. Given the fairly controversial nature of the claim, I would want to see more than one exec's comments on it, unless it was specifically framed as a comment, rather than fact. And then i'd question notability. 204.65.34.246 (talk) 23:15, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

North Korean personnel

There are two reports of hundreds of North Koreans being deployed in Iran's nuclear facilities:

• "Hundreds of N.Koreans' Working at Iran Nuke Facilities" "North Korea has dispatched a small army of engineers to Iran's nuclear and missile facilities, a diplomat claimed Sunday"
• "Hundreds of N. Korean Nuclear & Missile Experts Working in Iran" "Hundreds of North Korean missile and nuclear experts have reportedly worked for their Iranian counterparts in more than 10 locations across the Islamic state. This came from a South Korean diplomatic source"

In the current climate, drumming up sentiment for a war, I don't consider this a reliable source. Essentially it is an assertion of a South Korean diplomat which may be well founded or not. User:Fred Bauder Talk 16:03, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

If that assertion is reflected in other reputable sources, it doesn't matter whether we think the diplomat's assertion is well founded. We just have to be careful to frame it as something being asserted, rather than a verifiable fact. 204.65.34.246 (talk) 23:12, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Concerned about the veracity of this page.

I started to hit this page with 'citations needed' and realised it is a shitpit of completely outsourced opinions and soundbites with no actual citations, for the most part.

This wiki page really needs to be burned down.

One of the citations in the start of the entry actually sources Fox News, come on. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.45.245.220 (talk) 14:50, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree that this page is a disaster - a former war zone - but is it worth the effort? NPguy (talk) 02:25, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Far better to do something in editing it then to complain without any solution. Especially in unnecessary language. If this page is important to you, do something productive instead of adding to the problem. Fox News is a reputable source (according to wiki, even though I personally disdain them) as long as the content comes from their primary news, and not opinion/blogs/commentary. And if you found it questionable, then find competing reputable sources. Regardless, wiki pages are NOT about "veracity". We do not get to choose what is and isn't true. We work on verifiable information alone. We report what the reputable sources say, giving due weight, period.204.65.34.246 (talk) 23:10, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

This article resembles the article on Iraq's WMD prior to the invasion. There needs to be a section documenting the manipulation of western public opinion on the subject.

New articles needed

I was linking from 2003 to 2011 world oil market chronology but couldn't find anything to link to. Nowhere have I found in Wikipedia that anyone is threatening sanctions for Iran's nuclear activities, which is threatening to disrupt world oil supplies. All of this I have heard on the radio or seen in the newspaper. It's not right to add to an article and not provide further information, but unless someone can tell me where to look, that's how it is for now.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:48, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

See Sanctions against Iran and the articles to which it links. NPguy (talk) 23:24, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. That's what I needed.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:41, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Is there a link to that article anywhere in this article? I don't see how anyone would make the connection.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:17, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Somewhere in this article it should say that the European Union approved sanctions. This was the best source I could find with a quick search, and there's nothing there that can really improve this article.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:04, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Content excerpted from blog www.iranandiaea.wordpress.com and Wikipedia user Spacemen2050's contributions

In accord with the request of the editor who asked for a talk page discussion of this issue, I am starting one here, but at the same time I am commenting out (not deleting, someone else can do that) the table that cites the blog www.iranandiea.wordpress.com as the source.

http://iranandiaea.wordpress.com/about/

Anonymously authored blogs do not meet Wikipedia Reliable Sources requirements. Wikipedia user Spacemen2050's editing history borders on that of an SPA (single purpose account), and for someone as obviously knowledgeable about Wikipedia mark-up language, he is systematically using the "minor edit" tag to add large chunks of content to many Iran-related articles, which could be an effort to avoid scrutiny from editors who have their watch lists set to ignore minor edits. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.185.252.201 (talk) 14:35, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

I've removed the table. If the only problem had been that it was sourced from a blog, we could have removed the source and added {{citation needed}}, but the table also contain a strange mixture of information, with apparently no relation between the information given in different cells at the same row. To me it appeared like a lot of information was put together that did not really belong together, and at least not in a table. – Danmichaelo (talk) 21:53, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi good one on removing the table - it seemed to cause a lot of issues for a few people. Having just had a look at it though - it is clear that the information in the graph is supposed to be read downwards - not across (in rows). You say that "the table also contain a strange mixture of information, with apparently no relation between the information given in different cells at the same row. To me it appeared like a lot of information was put together that did not really belong together, and at least not in a table." But it is clear that each column must be read separately and they each list the ways in which Iran has not cooperated with the IAEA (and the NPT) in 3 headings for simplicity 'Warhead' (Iran's research and development into warhead technology), 'Non Cooperation' (lists the sites, which Iran has not allowed the IAEA access to) and 'Uranium' (referring to Iran's enrichment activity). Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Butterflys333 (talk • contribs) 10:20, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Iran Task Force/report

I don't have an issue with removing them from being subsections, but the Iran Task Force isn't actually part of the report, so putting it under there is misleading. If you don't want two subsections, I'd suggest making them into two different sections. --Activism1234 03:30, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I would not be too strict about the headings. There is text under headings for earlier IAEA reports that is not, strictly speaking, about the report, but about IAEA/Iran events in the period covered by the report. Adding too many subheads makes it harder to read. NPguy (talk) 23:49, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

This isn't an issue I'm strong about, but I just feel that proper formatting would call for it to be in different sections, and I'd be willing to review previous sections and make necessary changes there, if others agree here. --Activism1234 21:26, 2 September 2012 (UTC)