Talk:Shapour Bakhtiar

Concerning the speculation in the section French Exile

The speculation concerning complicity of the French and British governments in the assassination of Shapour Bakhtiar is contemptible. Anyone who has followed the news surrounding the assassination of Shapour Bakhtiar will remember that the person who was in charge of Bakhtiar's security in France was Shapour Bakhtiar's own son, from Bakhtiar's first marriage to his French wife. This son, a French national, was a high-ranking French police officer at the time and had the full responsibility for his father's security. As I remember, those who assassinated Bakhtiar were not strangers to him, but had cunningly built a close relationship with him over the course of several years (if my memory is not failing, three years), as fellow political activists. In this way they succeeded in by-passing the usual security measures — on that fateful day they had simply been left alone to conduct private discussions with Bakhtiar and thus did what they did. This wild and utterly unfounded speculation, that the French and the British might have been complicit in the assassination of Bakhtiar, is even below contempt and should not have any place in an intelligent discussion, and certainly not in an encyclopaedia. May I therefore request that someone correct the entry by removing the above-mentioned speculation? Such speculation seems to have been thought of by no one less that Dai-joon Napoleon (for those not in the know, please read Iraj Pezeshkzad's novel), or someone who suffers from the same mental ailment as Dai-joon. --BF 18:29, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about mental ailments, but this article seems to indicate that one British citizen was released and one French national was kidnapped right after the murder of Bakhtiar, but that appears to be it. Since that directly conflicts with what the article says, I'm going to change the article. AyaK 01:36, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Dear AyaK, thank you for your note. I must apologise for my use of "mental ailment" etc.; as I remember, at the time I was very angry to see such unsubstantiated claim, effectively making Shapour Bakhtiar's son as being complicit in the murder of his father, as part of an encyclopaedia article — such things are usually heard in pubs or during after-dinner chats. As for the news item in the NYT, even that needs proper interpretation; the events mentioned herein might have been just decoys, or they might have been signals for the actions that France would likely take in the wake of Shapour Bakhtiar's assassination. The fact is that no one knows (well, some people must know) what happened precisely; it is therefore fundamentally wrong, it is amoral, to accuse two nations as having been involved in the murder of someone without presenting even a single reference. Kind regards, --BF 07:15, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Agnostic?

As the article doesn't cite its source and nothing about it apears in the rest of the article (or maybe I just didn't look carefully enough or there is in another reference) on that it may or not be true, but until such a source is added it seems like Khomeinist propaganda of the Islamic Republic to make him look more like a corrupt western-inspired infidel. Lususromulus (talk) 10:22, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

POV

This article is heavily biased and lack sources, we should start fixing this article. Its like a pro-Bakhtiar user have written the whole article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MUCHERS22 (talk • contribs) 16:06, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

wrong move

The final climax came on February 11, when Qarabaghi announced that the armed forces would remain strictly 'neutral' in the political struggle between the two rival prime ministers. According to Qarabaghi, the armed forces had lost all semblance of cohesion, with many officers sympathizing with the opposition, disliking hotheads such as Oveissi and even withholding live ammunition from tanks, fearful that they could fall into the wrong hands (source: Qarabaghi, Truth about the Iranian Crisis, 55-6). For Qarabaghi, the final straw came when bakhtiyar ordered him to bombard the crowds breaking into the armories. He concluded that Bakhtiyar had lost all touch with reality. With the armed forces out of the scene, Bakhtiyar's fate was sealed.

SOURCE: Abrahamian, Ervand. The Crowd in the Iranian Revolution. Issue 105 Fall 2009. Radical History Review. p.29-30