Talk:Jamshid Sharmahd

Proposal to mitigate or reduce content that is State propaganda

Due to the fact that the person is still alive in captivity with their life in imminent danger, I propose to not highlight the accusations posed by the Islamic Regime of Iran. Especially sources that echo the Islamic Regime's state propaganda. This can create negative framing, and further endanger his life. Whoissya (talk) 07:09, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Alleged assassination attempt in US / alleged confirmation by Wikileaks cables

There is some charm in clicking a source and being taken to a tiny Iranian opposition YouTube page with a screen recording of a pirated CNN stream, complete with “MoxNews” watermark, where Elliot Spitzer credulously repeats some very Mandy Rice-Davies Applies claims from opposition leaders, and the cop whose claims are, AFAICT from the segment, the entire basis for the cable that we are claiming “confirms” them.

But, this is the kind of extremely inflammatory claim that if unchallenged is going to get repeated as fact by someone who absolutely knows better to gin up support for war -- so IMO that outweighs the charm of stumbling on a pretty transparent low-stakes influence operation.

To be clear, I'm not arguing that the claims in the video are necessarily untrue, but even ignoring the superficial issues with a watermarked pirated stream on an explicitly-biased source, a single breathless daytime cable news magazine report doesn't seem sufficient for including a claim of this gravity.

So, I added the "better source needed" tag, and am tempted to add a "dubious" tag to the "confirmed by leaked diplomatic cables" claim as well. But since the subject is at the moment a developing international news story, there's a good chance some more knowledgable editors will have eyes on this and can clear it up.

So, any thoughts? ShadyNorthAmericanIPs (talk) 11:46, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Disclaimer: this reply includes links to Wikileaks documents as they were referenced in the article's dubious claim: these are not intended to be taken as a reliable source for anything!

Reading through some of the documents referencing the incident, so far they are all Stratfor guys discussing media coverage and not independently confirming the events (one even expresses some doubt that it was an "MOIS plot"); one useful piece though is a now-dead link to a transcript of that bootleg Elliot Spitzer segment.

At this point I'd buy a formulation like "California police claimed that there was an aborted plot to assassinate Sharmahd", but the idea that there was an attempt, and that this was confirmed by unspecified leaked documents, is not at all supported by the current source. ShadyNorthAmericanIPs (talk) 21:31, 30 October 2024 (UTC)