The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. It might be more effective to raise talk page discussions at the articles involved (including tagging for a proposed merge) due to subject-specific knowledge involved; merges don't have to happen at AfD. Check out WP:MERGE and consider making use of proposed mergers. slakr^\ talk / 08:55, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Iranian pragmatists (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

• Merge with Politics of Iran and Principlists. Wikipedia:Notability. At best, the term would refer to realpolitik in the Iranian political arena. Parts of the RAND corporation work cited in the article is about the "pragmatic conservatives" and can be merged with the Principlists article. Pahlevun (talk) 17:46, 26 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 17:50, 26 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Iran-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 17:50, 26 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Nader et. al make a separate distinction between pragmatists and principlists. Thaler et. al support this notion when he considers pragmatists and principlists as distinct "ideological factions." The Council of Foreign Relations supports this distinctiveness as well when recalling, "the rise of a pragmatic wing among Iranian conservatives, sometimes known as the new Right", that "pragmatic conservatives have been critical both of reformers and hardliners," and that "the pragmatic conservatives make the compelling case that the regime must address the economic demands of its hard-pressed constituents, , an action that requires not only structural domestic economic reforms but also a rational foreign policy [...]" Since pragmatists advocate for domestic reforms, this makes the argument of realpolitik as moot as pragmatism is not concerned with foreign policies only. Bloomberg Marc Champion in an op-ed published by Bloomberg agrees with this distinctiveness as well when explaining how Iranian politics are divided into "four messy camps" of which pragmatists are one of them. STRATFOR makes this distinctiveness as well. So, all in all, we have plenty of reliable sources that show that (1) pragmatic conservatives are a political faction in Iran and that (2) pragmatists are distinct of principlists. IdlePheasant (talk) 18:08, 26 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. As I can read, bellow the cited Bloomberg article it says: This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. All other links provided, including Stratfor, do use the term "pragmatic conservatives", which means they are considered to be part of the conservative camp. Pahlevun (talk) 18:29, 26 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Fixed. And you are correct, pragmatists are considered part of the conservative bloc. But as shown above, they are also described distinctively than the other factions that compose the bloc. Reliable sources show they merit their own article. IdlePheasant (talk) 18:37, 26 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Also, notice that the nominator suggests to merge the article with Iranian Principlists but Nader et. al and Thaler et. al make a distinction between pragmatists and principlists. Therefore, we have reliable sources that show that pragmatists are not principlists. IdlePheasant (talk) 18:40, 26 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.