Jump to content

Talk:Qasem Soleimani: Difference between revisions

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
Line 242: Line 242:
{{ping|HistoryofIran}} How long will these lies, I was in all the protests and it wasn't, Did you ever go to the protests? I guess you are seeking to destroy the beloved country of Iran. [[User:M.k.m2003|M.k.m2003]] ([[User talk:M.k.m2003|talk]]) 11:52, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
{{ping|HistoryofIran}} How long will these lies, I was in all the protests and it wasn't, Did you ever go to the protests? I guess you are seeking to destroy the beloved country of Iran. [[User:M.k.m2003|M.k.m2003]] ([[User talk:M.k.m2003|talk]]) 11:52, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
:Keep this on-topic please, not the first time you've been told. The same goes for the silly accusations. Keep your personal opinion for yourself. --[[User:HistoryofIran|HistoryofIran]] ([[User talk:HistoryofIran|talk]]) 11:58, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
:Keep this on-topic please, not the first time you've been told. The same goes for the silly accusations. Keep your personal opinion for yourself. --[[User:HistoryofIran|HistoryofIran]] ([[User talk:HistoryofIran|talk]]) 11:58, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

{{ping|HistoryofIran} } I'm really sorry for you, You are insulting me and my nation! I have the right to defend myself And please do not include these in Wikipedia If not, I will sue you according to the policy [[User:M.k.m2003|M.k.m2003]] ([[User talk:M.k.m2003|talk]]) 12:05, 19 January 2020 (UTC)


==Section Should be titled "Death" and not "Assassination" ==
==Section Should be titled "Death" and not "Assassination" ==

Revision as of 12:06, 19 January 2020

Template:IRANPOL GS talk

RfC: Should the article say Soleimani was "assassinated" or "killed"?

Use mainly "assassinated", but sometimes also "killed". Closing per a WP:AN request because discussion has slowed substantially. Numerically, "assassinated" is favored over "killed" by a bit less than two to one. In terms of strength of argument, it has been noted that both terms are used in reliable sources, so this is really a matter of editorial judgment and preference as to which group of sources we want to follow. Several people advocate for using both terms, on a case-by-case-basis, noting that they are not mutually exclusive. My understanding of the rough consensus resulting from this discussion is that "assassinated" is the generally preferred term, and should be mainly used e.g. when this event is briefly referred to, but that in longer texts it can be used in alternation with "killed", both for reasons of balance among sources and to avoid inelegant repetition. Sandstein 08:13, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should the article say Soleimani was "assassinated", or "killed"? (See previous section. Both terms are found in RS.) -sche (talk) 21:01, 4 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Assassinated- Although there are some sources using the general term, i.e. 'killed', the actions leading to death of Soleimani was 'assassination' by definition. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary assassination is defined as "to murder (a usually prominent person) by sudden or secret attack often for political reasons" and Cambridge dictionary defines assassination as "the murder of someone famous or important." So when the reliable sources say he was assassinated, and he was actually assassinated (on the order of U.S. president) according to the definitions from dictionary, the proper word describing the action would be 'assassinated'. --Mhhossein talk 21:20, 4 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Killed - the Cambridge definition quoted above says that this is used for the "murder" of somebody famous or important. Murder is a highly charged word and it implies that the action is wrong, so in my view would contravene WP:NPOV. Killed is neutral and factual. Per my comments above, I would not contest adding wording to the effect of stating some commentators had called it an assassination. Darren-M talk 21:50, 4 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Killing may be unidentified too, whereas assassination is always an open secret. Nannadeem

(talk) 22:01, 4 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

    • Word Assassination is used for killing in which one is killed due to his/her title or role. Basically all assassinations are killing but each and every killings do not involve politics or portfolio. We generally hear or read that someone was killed in a road accident by an unidentified vehicle (driver). Appropriately we will not use word murder or assassination because of words specific application. Conveniently, in assassination we have info about the killed and killer (both human beings). You may also see Assassination. Per International law norms this killing should be termed as assassination. Nannadeem (talk) 07:10, 5 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • If, say, Iran lured the U.S. Secretary of the Army to Iraq as part of a peace negotiation, and there the SoA were killed by an Iranian drone, no one would hesitate to call it an assassination ... and it clearly is one under international law. To replace "assassination" with "killing" just because the party that did the killing has an interest in avoiding any charge of illegality is to inject POV. -- Jibal (talk) 06:29, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment / Note to admin or mod: This argument can almost certainly be dismissed, but if it is not dismissed, it will create a ton of work. If we're going to object to the use of 'assassination' and 'murder' on the grounds that they can never be neutral terms, then both words need to be removed from Wikipedia entirely. Selectively removing these words from articles about people killed by the US government but keeping them everywhere else would be a rather extreme bias. For the mod/admin who makes the final decision, please cite if you're basing your decision off of this argument or not. If so, we would need to change 60,898 articles with the words 'assassination' or 'assassinated', and 187,517 articles with the words 'murder.' -NorsemanII (talk) 11:08, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Killed. I came here from the RfC notice. I think the reality is that both words are accurate, and I see nothing wrong with using "killed" most of the time, but also referring to assassination at some places on the page. In a way, I think the sources are saying, above all, that it was a "targeted killing". Given that both words are widely used in sources, it's not really going to resolve the question to simply count how many sources use what. But I think that defaulting to calling it an assassination carries a subtle WP:POV that the US acted wrongly, whereas "killed" is a less loaded term. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:13, 4 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • If assassinated is intrinsically linked with a subtle POV, then are you suggesting the word should be excised from Wikipedia, and certainly from article titles? We still have "subtle POV" Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and many others. Or, perhaps you mean that people whom we appreciare get assassinated, people whom we don't like get killed so as to avoid a POV? — kashmīrī TALK 05:07, 5 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm certainly not suggesting that it should be generally excised (and I even said both could be used here). I realize that this is splitting hairs, but in an assassination, one generally expects that there is an identifiable assassin, whereas killing is a more generic term. I do realize of course that one also associates a killer with a killing, but it can equally be a killer or multiple killers. If there were a team of assassins, one would generally specify that. But as I said, I realize that this is splitting hairs. Where you ask about people we like and people we don't like, well, maybe there's a bit of that too. Nothing I would be proud of, but I think it's a fact that readers will tend to read it that way, and thus, a subtle POV. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:26, 5 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        • He was assassinated by a drone. There's nothing in the meaning of assassination (check the dictionary or the Wikipedia page) that entails the general expectations you assert. As for subtle POV, that's exactly what avoiding the word is. -- Jibal (talk) 06:16, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment: See my comment above. If we're objecting on the grounds that 'assassination' inherently carries a bias, we'll need to edit over 60,000 other Wikipedia pages. I hope we're not using this argument, but if we do, it's going to create a ton of work. -NorsemanII (talk) 11:13, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"[T]he targeted killing of a high Iranian state and military official by a surprise attack was “clearly an assassination,” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, an expert in international law and the laws of war at the University of Notre Dame School of Law."

[1]--SharʿabSalam▼ (talk) 13:11, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Let's apply a little critical thinking to Mary Ellen O'Connell's views. She maintains that after Bashar al-Assad attacked his own people with chemical weapons on multiple occasions, an operation intended to diminish his ability to mount another such attack was "as serious as the triggering offense." Such a person has no credibility.
The article that deemed her an "expert" on the laws of war contradicts itself. Later in that same article, it says if Soleimani "was leading forces against the United States " – which indeed he was, having ordered multiple attacks against U.S. servicemembers and U.S. civilians – "under the international laws of war as enunciated in the 1949 Geneva Conventions, he and his forces could be considered legitimate battle targets during any actual war or armed conflict, declared or undeclared." And a strike on a "legitimate battle target" is the opposite of an assassination. RealisticPacifist (talk) 20:10, 17 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
[2] tells me she is indeed well qualified and an expert in her area; one can of course bring opposing RS to the discussion.Selfstudier (talk) 09:57, 18 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, O'Connell's supporters continue to show a severe shortage of critical thinking skills. The source that you cited is a post on the Blog of the EJIL, and group blogs are "generally unacceptable" as Wikipedia sources. That blog post is quite informative about O'Connell herself, however. A quick look at it found no fewer than seven things that detract from O'Connell's credibility even further:
  1. O'Connell wrote that there were 63 "drone attacks against Somalia in 2019". Wrong: they weren't "against Somalia," they were against al-Shabaab terrorists, who are fighting to collapse the benevolent, internationally-recognized government of Somalia. (Are you aware that when al-Shabaab killed 537 bystanders on 14 October 2017, it was the fifth-deadliest terrorist attack in history?) The vast majority of Somali citizens, who aren't extremists, support these efforts to keep al-Shabaab in check. O'Connell's obfuscation of who exactly the drones were targeting is nefarious.
  2. O'Connell is incredulous that "reporters have actually been asking about the legality of the killing." This is as far from a neutral point of view as one can imagine. She seems to have forgotten everything she ever learned about the laws of war as articulated in the Geneva Conventions, which clearly provide the answer: military commanders who have been engaged in hostilities – such as ordering hundreds of rockets to be launched against U.S. servicemembers and U.S. civilians in November-December 2019, to name only some of Soleimani's recent aggressions – are legitimate military targets.
  3. She writes that a "defensive military response... must aim at the state legally responsible for the attack." She fails to acknowledge that the strike on Soleimani went above and beyond that requirement, because it was much more narrowly focused than some generic response against the state that had attacked U.S. servicemembers and U.S. civilians.
  4. O'Connell disingenuously writes that "it is inconsistent with self-defense to single out one military commander" – as if she would have preferred that a randomly-chosen member of the Iranian military had been targeted, rather than the specific individual who had recently ordered many attacks against U.S. servicemembers and U.S. civilians.
  5. She writes that military force must not be used to prevent an imminent attack. How hypocritical. Certainly if her home were invaded, and she had an opportunity to use force to prevent an imminent attack on herself or her family, she would not hesitate to do so.
  6. She writes that "if the United States has intelligence that Soleimani was plotting attacks on U.S. personnel in Iraq, the appropriate response was to take the information to Iraqi authorities." How naive; in other words, she thinks it's a good idea to count on the people who admired Soleimani so much that they attended his funeral to foil Soleimani's plots.
  7. O'Connell complains that Iran has been "set back even further from its urgent goal of economic prosperity." That is the effect of all economic sanctions – so apparently, she wants all economic sanctions to be lifted, even those imposed on the world's #1 state sponsor of terrorism. RealisticPacifist (talk) 19:41, 18 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]


  • Assassinated as his death fits the definition at Assassination - "Assassination is the act of killing a prominent person for either political, religious, or monetary reasons." Clearly, he was a prominent person and was killed for political reasons. Axedel (talk) 19:40, 5 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Do you think Trump did it out of political interest? That's questionable - this seems to hurt his re-election to me. State Department and other major media sources says it was pre-emptive self defense, and from what we know of Soleimani's history of activities in the region, that makes a lot of sense. Danski14(talk) 14:19, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps we should be wary of using Wikipedia articles for definitions. The very next sentence in that article sets out different criteria - "An assassination may be prompted by religious, political or military motives." Military reasons, seems to fit. FrankP (talk) 18:39, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Assassinated The term has been extensively used by various reliable media, and in terms of jargon and definition, I consider using it proper. Pahlevun (talk) 08:47, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • killed From NPR: [3] State department officials say there is overwhelming evidence he was plotting an attack on US assets. "The official added that the administration also explored whether there was another way to stop Soleimani, such as having him arrested, and determined there was "no way."" Danski14(talk)
  • Assassinated. Widely-used in reliable sources and expresses events more clearly. While 'killed' is used as well and could be used in the article, it's euphemistic in context and makes it harder to articulate the intentionality of the killing (which is unambiguous and not under dispute); given that both are well-sourced and used by high-quality sources, we should go with the more clear option. The argument some people are making that "assassinated" could have POV or TONE issues doesn't hold water when so many high-quality sources are using it, and if we're going to disregard the heavy use of both terms, the euphemistic nature of "killed" introduces WP:POV and WP:TONE issues of its own. I strenuously disagree with the implicit presumption that more euphemistic terms are always less POV or more neutral - sometimes (as in this case), precision and clarity are more neutral than couching things in euphemisms, at least when choosing between two terms that are both widely-used in high quality sources. In that respect this is a WP:NOTCENSORED situation; a widely-used, precise, and accurate term cannot be excluded simply because some people might find it offensive. --Aquillion (talk) 22:13, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

information Administrator note first, let me acknowledge that I am the admin who made the conscious decision to go with the alternate blurb, which used "killed" instead of "assassinate" on ITN. That said, participants should note that in the case of a no consensus result, "assassinate" will be prohibited from being added, per WP:ONUS. But those who express the preference for both, can obviously be included in the "assassinate" rather than the "killed" (per se.) camp. El_C 10:35, 5 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment Don't try to play the system. The term assassinate was already there in the article before this RfC was started, only not in the lead section, so you will first need a consensus if you want to remove the word. Otherwise the terms stays and can be used as needed. — kashmīrī TALK 23:17, 5 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, given that both terms have been in use both in RS (widely) and in this article, to say that only one requires consensus to continue being used while the other does not—that in the absence of consensus for either, one will be prohibited and removed while the other will be required—is...certainly one point of view... -sche (talk) 23:35, 5 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Killed Yesterday, many news outlets were avoiding the term "assassinate" because there is some debate about whether it was an assassination. It is a really gray area and opinions are in flux. Wiki guidelines state we used avoid the use of terms that are contentious. Just because the term was there before, is irrelevant and bringing it up is not playing the system, it is observing the guidelines. Whether it was a killing or an assassination is currently being debated on the World platform. While I think this will eventually be viewed as an assassination, I would suggest the article states "killed" for the present time. People should not be pointing at Wiki and using it as proof of condemnation. If there are any moves by World Organizations like the United Nations to condemn the act as an "assassination", the article can be updated later. I agree with MZMcBride that the debate itself may be worthy of mention. Vampire77

At this point, given articles such as <https://apnews.com/1f914021bc802931059746a5ce8a192e>, the discussion about whether to call this an assassination almost seems noteworthy to mention itself in the article. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:20, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Assassinated - Per WP:PRECISE; there's a good reason mainstream sources use both words. All assassination is killing, but not all killing is assassination. Saying someone who has been assassinated has been killed is true. Saying someone who has been assassinated has been killed, is more precise. That said, the article should use the word assassinated exclusively. We don't have to belabor the point. NickCT (talk) 04:23, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Assassinated at least some of the time: the term is widely used in reliable sources (e.g. BBC, NYT), including in those (cited in the preceding section) which also use the more general term "killed" e.g. for brevity in their headlines. I think we could follow the RS in using the precise term some of the time and then, if making repeated reference to his unalivening, sometimes also using "killed". Where do our policies and guidelines guide us here? The policy to use WP:PRECISE language, invoked in the comment above mine, is technically in a policy about article titles, not article-body text like is under discussion here (though one might find its spirit good to follow). In turn, WP:NPOV urges us to represent the views of reliable sources on a topic, and RS widely use the term "assassinated", as well as the term killed, so the suggestion some other commenters make above—that the policy forbids only one of those words—seems to selectively misunderstand the policy: it, and our general tendency to follow RS, would seem rather to lead us to use both words. -sche (talk) 05:50, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Assassinated -- It was, by definition, an assassination ("murder (an important person) in a surprise attack for political or religious reasons"). Avoiding the correct word injects POV. Simply searching for "assassination" in google at this time brings up a string of articles in reliable sources referencing Soleimani. -- Jibal (talk) 05:55, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Both and the term death for the relevant subheader - @-sche: Why would you ask this and why would you even pick a side when you already said in the RFC blurb that both terms are found in RS? Flaughtin (talk) 10:54, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Why would I ask? Because it was requested in the section above this one (which I referenced in my initial comment) that there be an RFC on this, and the comments here bear out that there are people who do not take the view that I (as noted in my comment above) and you do, that "both terms are found in RS" means "both terms can be found in the article". -sche (talk) 20:59, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Killed per WP:LABEL. "Assassinated" is obviously a controversial label. Adoring nanny (talk) 11:49, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Assassinated Most sources are describing the "killing" as an assassination. We should recognize that and use "Assassination" for the section heading and use the word "assassinated" throughout the article. "Killed" is a more general term but "assassinated" is reserved for targeted killings of high profile officials of a nation and Soleimani was considered second highest official of Iran thus his killing fits the definition of "assassination". According to some sources he was on official business as part of a peace mission delivering a message from Khamenei to Iraqi prime minister for Saudis as part of larger negotiations between the arch rivals. Getting killed like that when being on official business in another country fits the bill for the term "assassination". I am also in favor of using the term "assassination" and "assassinated" until this RFC is decided as this term was used first and there was no consensus to remove it. We can change it to "Death" or "Killed" if this RFC decides so at the end. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 13:02, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is worth pointing out that that is not true. It was first described as "killed", per this edit https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Qasem_Soleimani&diff=933788415&oldid=933788253, and the text used the terminology "killed" until (afaict) this edit https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Qasem_Soleimani&diff=934420027&oldid=934415867 two days after the RFC began (when there was no consensus to add it). Considering that fact, it the article should almost certainly use "killed" until there is consensus to change that. AmbivalentUnequivocality (talk) 01:40, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Killed as the word "assassinated" usually denotes killing of a non-military target, while at least according to one party he was a legal military target (a commander of a specific unit) and we should take that into account to not contravene WP:NPOV. H2ppyme (talk) 16:49, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Killed We typically have a "Death" section in bios and leave the description of method to for the contents. It seems like most arguments on WP are about gratuitous characterizations like this. He was inarguably "killed." Why not simply describe how he was killed and by whom, and let the reader decide how to characterize it beyond that? The purpose of WP is to educate, but too many people want to use it to indoctrinate.John2510 (talk) 18:09, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Assassinated wikipedia says "Assassination is the act of killing a prominent person for either political, religious, or monetary reasons. An assassination may be prompted by religious, political or military motives." sources: The Economist[1]The Guardian [2]The Newyork Times[3]Aljazeera [4] Rasulnrasul (talk) 18:36, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/01/07/was-americas-assassination-of-qassem-suleimani-justified
  2. ^ https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2020/jan/07/assassination-of-qassem-suleimani-podcast
  3. ^ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/podcasts/the-daily/trump-iran-soleimani.html
  4. ^ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/trump-assassination-soleimani-200103172526102.html
That doesn't seem to make any sense. A serving army officer is a military target. And the military always act under "political orders". FrankP (talk) 20:18, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Those references were added when someone changed the status quo wording to wording that used the word “assassinated”. The “assassinated” wording was reverted, but the references were kept. It’d be easy to find & add 2 references that use the word “killed”, but what’s important is how many sources use “killed” & how many sources use “assassinated”. Blaylockjam10 (talk) 19:41, 10 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Assassinated. It is a shame that after so much consent, somebody still reverts this to "killed". It was pre-planned, pre-meditated murder, on alien territory, without possible and required approval of Congress, UNO, Iraqi government, against US law, UN Charta, Iraqui sovereignity, even against common sense, so far without even the evidence for the claimed motives. Most reliable expert sources within the USA and even more outside, see it exactly as what it is. Almost the only ones questioning this are partisans of the President. --Gabel1960 (talk) 05:53, 11 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Context specific I think Flaughtin and Kashmiri make the strongest argument here, particularly with regard to the former's suggested phrasing of the section header. I think both terms can be used, depending on the context of the surrounding verbiage. So, my support is not for either "killed" or "assassinated," but rather, it depends on the context of the words surrounding it, and I'm not prepared to grant support to a blanket RfC that only one word may be used in the entire article. If the nom wants to initiate a new RfC that is more context specific and focused on a particular paragraph(s), then that's a good solution and I would consider supporting either "killed" or "assassinated" on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis. I also think one or more reference(s) to WP:PRECISE may be a red herring here, but, nevertheless, that policy cannot trump WP:NPOV. --Doug Mehus T·C 16:31, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Assassinated It's being used by reliable sources and killed is less precise. Dartslilly (talk) 18:44, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Killed is the proper use here. Many acts during wartime (weather cold or hot) are pre-planned, pre-meditated, military actions conducted in secret, and totally legal under the War Powers Act afforded the president of the U.S. by congress. Just as many RS references could be found using "killed" as any other, including "assassination". You can argue semantics, but the end result is he was unarguably "killed". GenQuest "Talk to Me" 21:47, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The UK SOE assassinated a lot of Nazis in the Second World War. They were proudly assassinating them using specialist weapons like Welrod that had no other purpose.RonaldDuncan (talk) 12:31, 16 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • The US was not in a state of war with Iran as the UK and Germany during WW2. That makes an important difference. Soldiers get killed on the battlefield in a war. Political leaders in peacetime get assassinated. — kashmīrī TALK 10:42, 17 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Assassinated is the proper term for such a targeted political killing of this nature. Hawkeye7 (discuss)
  • Assassinated is the proper term for the targeted killing of a political rival, approved by a nation state. RonaldDuncan (talk) 12:31, 16 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Assassinated To remove it, an action that was identified as such worldwide, would be NPOV. "Killed" can be used as well, but it is substantially less descriptive and informative than the actual circumstance. Wikipedia is not censored, and to erase the commonly used term for what clearly happened would in fact be just that. Three drones fired missiles in the assassination. I just Googled "Solemaini" and "assassinated" and got 50 million hits. He wasn't the only one killed: "Iranian and Iraqi officials have so far confirmed the U.S. attack killed eight other people who were accompanying Soleimani at Iraqi’s Baghdad airport.' https://www.voanews.com/extremism-watch/look-key-figures-killed-qassem-soleimani-us-strike They were: Jamal Jaafar Ibrahimi, more commonly known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was the head of Iraq’s powerful anti-American Shiite group, Kataeb Hezbollah, and the deputy commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces. The U.S. labeled al-Muhandis an adviser to Soleimani and a key Shiite militia leader targeting the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and U.S. allies in the Middle East. He reportedly participated in the bombing of Western embassies in Kuwait and the attempted assassination of the emir of Kuwait in the early 1980s. Before his death in the U.S. airstrike, al-Muhandis earlier this week was seen leading hundreds of Shiite protesters and militiamen who attacked the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad. Major General Hossein Pourjafari, also referred to as Jafari Nia in Iran, was known as the right-hand man of Soleimani since the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s and was his most trusted assistant afterward. He played a critical role in the formation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intelligence wing. IRGC was designated a terror group by the Trump administration in April 2018 for its destabilizing efforts in the Middle East. Colonel Shahroud Mozaffari Nia served as a in the IRGC. Another Iran-Iraq War veteran, he spent his last years as a member of IRGC’s intelligence unit. He reportedly worked with pro-Iranian militias in Lebanon and Syria under the pseudonym of Abu Ahmad. Hadi Taremi, an IRGC lieutenant, was was a member of the IRGC security bureau for almost 10 years before his promotion to IRGC’s Quds Force unit. He was known to be one of the closest people in Soleimani’s inner circle and his No. 1 bodyguard. He accompanied Soleimani in most of his official visits inside Iran. Vahid Zamanian, another IRGC lieutenant was reportedly one of the rotating bodyguards of Soleimani and accompanied him in some unofficial international visits. Additionally, he reportedly was involved in the IRGC-Quds Force’s Fatemiyoun Brigade, an all-Afghan militia formed in 2014 and sent to Syria to help the government of Bashar al-Assad in the fight against Sunni rebels. Muhammad Radha al-Jabri was in charge of airport protocol for the Iraqi Shiite militia known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Not much is known about al-Jabri’s background, but according to Iraqi media, he was a graduate of Imam Hossein University in Tehran. Hassan Abdu al-Hadi, Muhammad al-Shaybani and Haider Ali had not been identified as to their positions as of January 3rd. Activist (talk) 14:16, 16 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like there's a consensus to use "assassination," by a count of 26-13 or so. Activist (talk) 14:21, 16 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Killed.
Dear Activist: most people believe the international laws of war, as enunciated in the 1949 Geneva Conventions, are a good thing, because they have made warfare somewhat less brutal. E.g., the Geneva Conventions encourage combatants to use tactics that minimize civilian casualties, and they have reduced the incidence of rape as a tool of war. Do you agree that the Geneva Conventions have been a good thing?
Soleimani had ordered attacks against U.S. servicemembers and against U.S. civilians. Therefore, according the the Geneva Conventions, he and his subordinates were legitimate military targets – and a strike on a legitimate military target is the the opposite of an assassination. Case closed.
This supposed "consensus" has largely appeared because – in a transparent imposition of their own non-neutral point of view – some news organizations have mischaracterized the strike as an assassination. Wikipedia is not a place to amplify the mischaracterizations of other organizations. RealisticPacifist (talk) 19:40, 17 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

in the lead: "widely regarded as a breach of international law"

Wow, that needs clarification and citations. The WSJ argues it was lawful [5]. I think it is premature to conclude. More info from NPR here: [6]. Danski14(talk)

Yep, WSJ. We try not to use Fox News either. — kashmīrī TALK 14:21, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The WSJ does no such thing ... that's an opinion piece by Alan Dershowitz (whose name bizarrely is misspelled). And your other citation is to Al Jazeera, not NPR, and it pretty much argues that it was not a lawful killing. -- Jibal (talk) 05:46, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect the lawfulness and propriety of this killing is something that's going to be debated for many years. WP can either: 1) set forth both arguments and the rationale supporting each; or 2) have an endless edit war over what characterizations are correct. We should do the former, but will doubtless do the latter. That's why people have little faith in WP when it comes to controversial subjects. John2510 (talk) 21:28, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Jibal, question, but the WSJ editorial board would not have reviewed and approved Mr. Derschowitz' column, though, correct? I don't see a problem with including that statement in the Lede, though I'd probably remove "widely" per WP:NPOV and we may want to attribute the piece to Mr. Derschowitz. Doug Mehus T·C 16:43, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
No, obviously not correct. Newspapers constantly publish opinion columns that the management or editorial board does not agree with. And what statement? The statement that it is widely seen as violating international law is true. Danski14 referencing the Dershowitz piece is typical of his cherry picking, and labeling it as being by the WSJ is typical of his arguments from authority. -- Jibal (talk) 17:30, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Jibal, That's true they may not agree with it, but they've nonetheless included it for publication and have provided a higher level of editorial peer review than, say, a letter to the editor, which is not checked for factual accuracy beyond legal concerns (i.e., potentially libelous material). So, that's why I said attribution to Derschowitz would be necessary. Doug Mehus T·C 17:35, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not going to debate with you your completely mistaken--and shifting--understandings of how opinion pages work.--Jibal (talk) 17:38, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Trump Administration stated that the attack on Qasem Soleimani was carried out in accordance with the War Powers Resolution under the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF) resolution of 2001. 96.234.63.6 (talk) 13:18, 10 January 2020 (UTC)Kolef96.234.63.6 (talk) 13:18, 10 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The question was not about the US law but about the international law. Read about the opinion of the UN Special Rapporteur.[7] (cached [8]) — kashmīrī TALK 18:45, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The opinion of Alan Dershowitz is obviously only his opinion; he is not the representative of anyone except himself. Huldra (talk) 22:18, 14 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Dershowitz is one record as thinking torture of captured enemies is not a violation of international law. His opinion is not technical, but political, and nothing he writes in this area is of value, and therefore even if predictably hosted by the WSJ it is just an opinion whose use hangs on the resonance of the name (the guy who got OJ Simpson off the rap). Find a better source, from a recognized scholar of international law specializing in this specific area.Nishidani (talk) 09:21, 15 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Here Nishidani (talk) 09:24, 15 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Number of children

Diff changed the article from saying he has four children (two sons, two daughters) to saying he has two children (one son and one daughter) (without changing the Persian-language source for the statement). The Times and WaPo speak of four children, like we previously did, but they quite possibly copied that from us, since I've seen how certain other erstwhile confusions in our article also made it into some news reports (ah, citogenesis). What does the Persian-language source we're citing say? Google translate suggests it says "Qassim has two daughters and a son" (and elsewhere speaks of "one of the daughters of Haj Qassim", as if he indeed has more than one), which would represent a third number. The way the WaPo article is worded implies that some people could perhaps be counting a son-in-law as one of his sons, which could be behind some of the confusion. Can we find some definitive sources for how many children he has? Ones from before 2020 would seem less likely to be citogenesis. -sche (talk) 17:28, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(As an aside, that diff also named two children in the infobox, but are we supposed to name non-notable children? -sche (talk) 17:55, 8 January 2020 (UTC))[reply]
The article now reports a fourth number: "five children: three sons and two daughters", citing The Guardian and Heavy. Hopefully this, at last, is the correct figure... -sche (talk) 06:30, 14 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Other reactions about Soleimani's death

Reliable sources are showing that not everyone reacted similarly to the Soleimani's death. I have tried to show this in the article but was reverted by Saff V. saying "these edit are pushing some certain POVs by adding details not necessary for this article". Adding a different POV is not the same as POV pushing. I have nevertheless tried to make the statements more neutral and added more reliable sources to back them up. This is what I'm adding into the article since these are backed by reliable sources and give information about different types of reactions about Soleimani's death:

  • Iraqi anti-government protesters celebrated Soleimani’s death by singing, dancing and waving Iraqi flags in the streets.[1][2][3]
  • US Senator Tom Cotton released a statement saying that Qassem Soleimani "masterminded Iran’s reign of terror for decades, including the deaths of hundreds of Americans.” [7] This was also stated by the New York Times who said: "General Suleimani planned and directed attacks that killed thousands of civilians in Iraq and Syria, along with many American service members."

Alex-h (talk) 14:29, 9 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed most of those. It's bad enough that people are bloating 2020 Baghdad International Airport airstrike with every reaction they can find, which (as discussed on that talk page) will get cut in a week [or, I see, many have already been cut now]; let's not duplicate that here. It's WP:RECENTISM; all these miscellaneous reactions for everyone who's said anything, especially short comments that someone was "a murderer" or whatever, don't have much WP:WEIGHT in the totality of what RS say about this person. (It also doesn't escape notice that you're presenting only some of the reactions of even the people you're citing, e.g. Warren has been critical of the manner of the killing but you're not including that, which raises questions of whether WP:NPOV is being followed...) -sche (talk) 20:43, 9 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Iraq anti-government protesters sing, dance after Soleimani death
  2. ^ Iraqis ‘dancing in the street’ after Soleimani death: Pompeo
  3. ^ Iraqis Celebrate after Soleimani Death
  4. ^ Ted Cruz: Soleimani assassination is justice for Israel, Trump tweets flag
  5. ^ US officials began weighing in on the move, and reactions among Democrats and Republicans were dramatically split down party lines.
  6. ^ Who was Iran's Qassem Soleimani and why does his death matter?
  7. ^ Cotton Statement on Reported Death of Qassem Soleimani
Reactions sections are sheer bloat. They have no encyclopedic function whatsoever, and are Wikipedia's imitation of instagram, facebook, twitter tweeting. No one is surely interested in a range of predictable statements all calibrated for political angle, and carefully manicured to show 'concern'.Nishidani (talk) 11:26, 14 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Haphazard editing

I'm very short on time for the next 2-3 days, but I read the sources and completed five of six bare and/or incomplete citations and undid one subsequent edit that seemed to clearly violate Wikipedia standards. I would hope that those unwilling or unable to follow WP guidelines would make correct and complete NPOV edits or refrain from editing this topic at all. Activist (talk) 22:12, 11 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@@Activist: Bear in mind this is an incredibly newsworthy and highly emotive topic, so there will be interest in this content above and beyond normal levels. I suspect many of the edits you are referring to are simply people unused to editing (or even being used to editing, but not such highly charged topics) who are simply trying their best. I think there's a danger here of not assuming good faith, and we also need to be mindful not to bite the newbies. Best, Darren-M talk 22:30, 11 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Extremely fascinating to see a "WP guideline" legend who just "undid one subsequent edit that seemed to clearly violate Wikipedia standards" (1) from a newbie thinks "Wikipedia English is not an appropriate place for a foreign language". Anyway, thanks for caring, Darren! Ms96 (talk) 22:41, 11 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I guess I stand corrected: You posted, I deleted, then you reinserted this. Somehow I thought it was Farsi. جمع در چند شهر ایران در اعتراض به انکار اصابت موشک به هواپیمای اوکراینی؛ گاز اشک‌آور و شعار علیه رهبر و سپاه در تهران|language=fa|website=BBC}} "شعار معترضان علیه قاسم سلیمانی در تهران:‌ «سلیمانی قاتله، رهبرش هم قاتله»". VOA (in Persian). "معترضان: سلیمانی قاتله، رهبرش هم جاعله". Activist (talk) 14:46, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

References

List of all the URLs cited

I made and alphabetized a list of all the URLs this article cites, which I used to find and combine several duplicates. I also noticed we were citing the German tabloid Bild, a deprecated source per WP:RSP, and removed it. If anyone else would find such a list useful, e.g. to look over for other deprecated sources, it's here. -sche (talk) 21:21, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Lack of neutrality

The style and content of the entire first paragraph of section 6.2 Reaction seem far remote from WP's standards of objectivity and neutrality. I propose the paragraph be removed completely. -- Kai Neergård (talk) 18:12, 13 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The section I believe you're referring to was added recently and indeed suffered from a host of problems, including parts being unsourced, parts being sourced to unusable sources / sources not reliable for what they were being used for (per WP:RSPS), parts misrepresenting sources and/or failing to adhere to a neutral tone, and parts giving excess WP:WEIGHT to things. I simply reverted the entire addition. If any parts of the section were salvageable, consensus to add them can be sought here. -sche (talk) 06:50, 14 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I was asked on my talk page about my removal of this content; as this regards article content (and also as I don't have much time at the moment and hope others will weigh in), I am responding here. (I had not bothered to check who had added the content at the time I removed it, only noticing it in the big diff of all changes "updated since your last visit", but digging through the history I see it was added in diff (scroll past the relocation of the sanctions content), for reference.) The parts I referred to as unsourced were those that didn't have sources directly after them, such as the first sentence (perhaps the intention was that the sources present after the second sentence also verified the first). Other bits were more insidiously unsourced, and synthesized: for example, In one case, New York Times journalist Farnaz Fassihi cited Hassan Rouhani as a “moderate president”, while less than a month earlier 1500 protesters were killed at his orders[1]., where the quoted text does not appear in the cited New York Times article, although it does speak of "Iran’s relative moderates like Mr. Rouhani", and the mention of protestors being killed "at his orders" is nowhere in the NYT article at all (apparently it is intended to the "sourced" to the other Wikipedia article), which means by definition the NYT article isn't connecting the killing to either Rouhani's moderateness/non-moderateness or to Qasem Soleimani: the information is off-topic, clearly POV, and SYNTH. And so forth... -sche (talk) 11:49, 14 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The piece of text discussed above was reentered today at 7 PM under a new headline "Iranian propaganda". I maintain the view that its style is absolutely inappropriate for WP. The author should specify exactly and in detail every single case of "disinformation", "fake news", "fabricated journalist personas", "coordination of the international public opinion" etc. etc. that is being referred to with valid documentation. The references given do not serve as such documentation. I have not looked at every one of them, but the few I checked were clearly not neutral. Neither did they pretend neutrality. -sche asked for a discussion in this forum for consensus. I request that the author of the section "Iranian propaganda" enters such a dicussion instead of stubbornly going on his/her own - Kai Neergård (talk) 22:20, 15 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Kai Neergård: "We are already seeing Iranian disinformation efforts by these networks surrounding last night’s strike" Telegraph, "Iran had long been working on a disinformation army to rival Russia’s Internet Research Agency, as well as other tactics such as the creation of fake news outlets and fabricated journalist personas" also Telegraph. Perhaps you would also be interested in "They showed Soleimani posing with children; Soleimani reading Gabriel García Márquez; Soleimani in a Palestinian keffiyeh; ... Iran also began deploying Soleimani on another front: launching a propaganda war centring on the self-styled “noble warrior,” a man who could appeal to both nationalists and religious conservatives. The “Commander of Hearts” became a fixture on domestic news. Iranian elites who would refer to him tongue-in-cheek as “Soleiman the Magnificent,” after the Ottoman sultan who so intimidated Europe" Prospect. Please, please spend 1/100 of the time I spent writing it and "look at every one of" the references. Just curious, aren't "Soleimani was viewed favorably by 82% of Iranians with 59% of them very favorable toward him" or "Soleimani's personality was compared to the fictional characters Karla, Keyser Söze and The Scarlet Pimpernel" among your concerns? Ms96 (talk) 07:48, 16 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It is inappropriate to copy language from The Telegraph as describing facts. The Telegraph has a political agenda that is clearly recognisable to its readers. Readers of WP expect facts, not political propaganda. If you feel that the coverage of post-assassination events by media like The Telegraph has a relevance to the WP readership, the correct form would be "Some media report that ...". The headline should be "Media coverage of alleged Iranian propaganda" - Kai Neergård (talk) 09:57, 16 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This is not only Telegraph, for example "Iran is a persistent, sophisticated and well-resourced actor which has been active in the online disinformation space for years" USA Today, Iran has online disinformation operations, too (CNN). This is not just what some "media" think 1 to say "Some media report that ...". "Media coverage of alleged Iranian propaganda" is absolutely misleading. Yes, all media have "a political agenda" and none is 100% neutral, but what? The whole article is based on info reflected in media. This section is the most well-cited and all references are in compliance with WP:RSP. Have you bothered reading the rest of the article? Is "Soleimani practiced karate and was a fitness trainer in his youth" more "relevant to the WP readership"? You didn't also make any comments about the above mentioned sentences ("Soleimani was viewed favorably ..." and ""Soleimani's personality was ..."). Are they better sourced? Better suited for WP readership? I added more references and will remove the POV tag soon if not challenged, as this part is the best sourced section (so far).Ms96 (talk) 12:48, 16 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Dismal, should be deleted in its entirety, if I put my mind to it, I am sure that I can create an equally useless section entitled "US propaganda".Selfstudier (talk) 13:54, 16 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This is not a survey on "do you like this paragraph or not", tell us based on which guideline should this be deleted? What is violated? Why don't you really "put your mind to it" and make contribution? It would be much appreciated. p.s.: Isn't anyone going to answer my questions up there? Are all the Karate and Keyser Söze stuff OK? Ms96 (talk) 15:14, 16 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I don't need to, I am joining with the two other editors telling you that this content is rubbish.If I make a contribution it will be to delete it (unless you do it yourself first).Selfstudier (talk) 14:23, 17 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

IranDonald Trump is a persistent, sophisticated and well-resourced actor which who has been active in the online disinformation space for years

Disinformation is not peculiar to Iran, and therefore selecting this from a two-bit tabloiud piece of hackwork won't fly.Nishidani (talk) 18:10, 18 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I removed the section, as there is clearly no consensus for it and many problems with it as outlined above. The content in question was here (old revision), removed in diff, if anyone wants to workshop/make a case for includabiltiy of particular parts of it. -sche (talk) 19:36, 18 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ "Iranians Close Ranks Behind Leaders After U.S. Kills Popular General". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 January 2020.

Iranian propaganda Heading

This Heading is about advertising in Iran But it's all a lie, Completely violates the wiki policy, I think its title should be media lies M.k.m2003 (talk) 11:48, 18 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is already a section about this above with title "Lack of Neutrality"; you might want to put your comments in there.Selfstudier (talk) 12:01, 18 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is so much in the lies section that I can't believe Wikipedia is here, Unilateralism also has a limit, Wikipedia is for everyone, How is it allowed to have such controversial content on Wikipedia? M.k.m2003 (talk) 12:42, 18 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There are several editors now questioning the POV nature of this material, you are not the only one. Let's see if others will also comment.Selfstudier (talk) 12:50, 18 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I moved this into the existing section where this is discussed, so that the discussions of this are all in one place. -sche (talk) 19:38, 18 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I feel like a few parts are salvageable, but the section as a whole had so many problems that it's better to remove it for now, yeah. Just going over the sources, several of them are weak or unusable - Cyberscoop and the Washington Examiner, say. Others are opinion-pieces being cited for statements of fact, which isn't acceptable, or are clearly WP:BIASED sources used without attribution. Some of the other sources aren't about Soleimani in particular and are used for WP:SYNTH. There are some higher-quality sources, but they tend to take a more cautious or careful tone, whereas the section adopted mostly the sweeping and dramatic tone of the weaker sources and the opinion-pieces. The whole thing strings together a few bits of factual reliable reporting with angry opinion pieces, some WP:SYNTH, and and a few totally unusable sources to create a much more dramatic whole than the more staid mainstream coverage. Also, propaganda is probably a WP:LABEL, and while some sources use it, several don't. --Aquillion (talk) 07:38, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Firstly, I admit being overwhelmed by opposite views in this discussion. Dear @Aquillion:, just specify exactly which sources are weak or "totally unusable", I will delete them. Also which aren't about Soleimani (frankly couldn't find any)? Would be helpful to note some sources (including cyberscoop and examiner) were added after @Kai Neergård: called me stubborn and asked for more sources. Then Selfstudier called it rubbish and tagged the the paragraph as overlinked). By my count >70% are referring to this as "propaganda" and I therefore insist on the topic. I will also change the tone to more neutral as I previously did. @M.k.m2003: be more specific, which "wiki policy"? Which "lie" with >25 sources? Dear @Selfstudier:, sure you "don't need to" contribute, but that's the normal protocol. I'm also adding the issue to wikiproject:Iran talk page. Also @-sche:, "When you find a passage in an article that is biased, inaccurate, or unsourced the best practice is to improve it if you can rather than deleting salvageable text." You were right, the paragraph was "removed again by someone", you! @HistoryofIran: your comments would also be appreciated; I want to attract more attention toward this talk without violating any guidelines, what should I do at this point? Ms96 (talk) 10:36, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @Ms96: my brother, This article is about Qasem Soleimani And this has nothing to do with the article, Wiki policy is separate from unilateralism, It is completely wrong to say that Suleimani's photo was torn by the Iranian people We must also consider the millions who mourned, But thousands have been told That's a big lie And the sources are not neutral either You must follow the wiki policy, wish you luck. Thank you M.k.m2003 (talk) 10:49, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi M.k.m2003! So you have problem with the word "thousands"? It was actually written in many sources, including those I used. I work 100% based on guidelines. Saying his photo was torn was wrong?! This statement was supported by, like 7-8 sources and I could add more. Related videos could also be found on YouTube and Twitter Ms96 (talk) 10:57, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Ms96: First of all I have a problem with the whole text, In Iran they tore the picture of Donald Trump So go add this to this article, Your resources are not neutral if you add ten thousand sources So there is no Credibility M.k.m2003 (talk) 11:17, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"I have a problem with the whole text", read WP:FORUM and WP:CENSOR. "In Iran they tore the picture of Donald Trump", why do you hesitate to add it to the article? "resources are not neutral", they actually are based on WP:RSP. I won't compromise on deleting sources with "No consensus" status or better. Ms96 (talk) 11:28, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Ms96: Oh Are you kidding? I didn't mean just me, I think you got it wrong I mean wiki policy Because you are violating it, You have no right to be one-sided M.k.m2003 (talk) 11:46, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

At most any material about Iranian propaganda shouldn't take up more than a sentence or so of the article (perhaps as part of the reactions section), should be well sourced to reputable RS (one or two is enough) and should not give the impression that it is only Iran that is engaged in propaganda exercises. That's my 2 cents.Selfstudier (talk) 10:55, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. Based on which guideline have you decided that it should be summarized in "1" sentence with "1-2" sources while being widely disscused on democratic/republican/western/eastern/Iranian/non-Iranian media? Which sources are good? I ask because you apparently don't believe in Telegraph, CNN, BBC, Fox, Washington Post, Prospect, Vox, Quartz, Vice, France24, etc. Why should it not give that impression while actually being mentioned in those media? Ms96 (talk) 11:06, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Not gonna lie I've not read everything in this topic, so there might be some mistakes or something I've missed, anyways, here's my two cents: Sources by the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) are obviously not reliable, and is indeed propaganda. Mind you, this is a country that doesn't allow basic rights, and violently (yes, violently, 2019–20 Iranian protests), and calls the Iranian protestors for "American and Israeli spies" (look up Khamenei's twitter, there are loads of these accusations). I thought this was a no brainer. "The majority of Iranians loving Soleimani" is obviously not true, there were loads of sources that testified to that. Yet, it was removed, because.. it was POV? Lol. It's more POV now. It's a pretty normal custom for authoritarian governments to stage such huge funerals in a desperate bid for legitimacy. --HistoryofIran (talk) 11:44, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@HistoryofIran: How long will these lies, I was in all the protests and it wasn't, Did you ever go to the protests? I guess you are seeking to destroy the beloved country of Iran. M.k.m2003 (talk) 11:52, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep this on-topic please, not the first time you've been told. The same goes for the silly accusations. Keep your personal opinion for yourself. --HistoryofIran (talk) 11:58, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

{{ping|HistoryofIran} } I'm really sorry for you, You are insulting me and my nation! I have the right to defend myself And please do not include these in Wikipedia If not, I will sue you according to the policy M.k.m2003 (talk) 12:05, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Section Should be titled "Death" and not "Assassination"

While we do know the Trump Administration clearly lied as to why he was taken out, we still don't know whether or not Soleimani was involved in the rocket attack which was used as an excuse to target him.2601:447:4100:C120:88F0:1D3:2AE2:B988 (talk) 20:05, 13 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The section title was assassinated before the above RfC started and most of the time it was assassinated. Assassination means the act of killing a prominent person for either political, religious, or monetary reasons. This fit into this story and also most reliable sources use assassination.--SharʿabSalam▼ (talk) 20:14, 13 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That is not true. When the RFC began (and before that as well), it was titled "Death". It was only changed to "Assassination" two days after the RFC began, before any consensus was reached. AmbivalentUnequivocality (talk) 07:19, 14 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The section title and section text are being mixed up, I think. As of this diff, just prior to the start of the RFC (hence at a time when there was not [as there still is not, the RFC being unclosed] any consensus to use the word "killing", among other things there was not consensus for), the section title was "death", while the text mentioned that "Sergei Lavrov, Medea Benjamin [et al ...] designated the assassination of Soleimani 'flatly illegal'". At various points after (and probably also before) this, attempts were made by some users to add, switch other words to, and make the article exclusively use the word "killing", while other editors switched some instances back in the other direction, to "assassination". Apparently, which words were "originally" used in which places was not always perfectly observed, although in this respect the article does seem to be in almost the same state now as it was just before the RFC, at least as far as the section title in question saying "death" again and the section saying the aforementioned folks "called the assassination of Soleimani 'flatly illegal'". -sche (talk) 12:13, 14 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
He did not die a natural death. He was killed deliberately, no-one questions that. Whether the killing was an "assassination" is questionable, a matter of PoV. So use killing. Maproom (talk) 10:55, 17 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
We conducted an RfC above. Editors voted 26-13 in favor of using the term "assassination." That sounds like a consensus to me. If not, to be consistent, I would propose that the "Jesus of Nazareth" Wikipedia article remove the terms "crucify" or "Crucifixion" (used 53 times) by "Roman soldiers" to instead read, "was said to have been temporarily suspended on a wooden structure by Italianate workers." Activist (talk) 11:40, 17 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Said RFC has not yet been closed, and is thus ongoing. Reminder that RFC's are WP:not counting heads and consensus, or lack thereof, will be determined by an uninvolved closing editor. AmbivalentUnequivocality (talk) 05:44, 18 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As alluded to by -sche, in some respects it does not matter which euphemism is used. It matters more whether the (insert favorite euphemism here) can be legally justified in some jurisdiction and/or in international law.Selfstudier (talk) 10:57, 18 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Qasem_Soleimani&oldid=936521904"