What an author states in public will affect their credibility at any rate. If they engage in 'clownery' as you put it, then this will directly impact their standing.
The notion that Taghvai has been "right 8-9/10 times in his predictions" cannot be substantiated by evidence, it remains largely speculative in nature.
Issue being that OSINT information is partial and incomplete by its very essence. So is what Iranian authorities choose to withhold (versus what they decide to make public). In other terms, regular readers most of the time are deprived of the necessary tools to verify claims by Taghvai or similar authors who base themselves on purported inside sources.
You just misquoted my statement. I wrote said Tom Cooper suggested as much, not that he published those particular sentences verbatim. A suggestion can be an indirect insinuation, and that is exactly what Cooper proceeded with.
Nothing is easier to prove. Suffice to pay attention to the content of the article in question, namely its passages excerpted below. Source of the article:
https://warisboring.com/47047-2/
First the author writes:
In all rationality, ensuing paragraphs are thus to be understood as a rebuke to the above. In particular:
Black on white proof right here. Tom Cooper is making the claim that Iran cannot produce "modern SAM systems" (sic) - no nitpicking could possibly achieve to spin the explicit meaning of this quote.
Since Bavar-373 and other recently unveiled Iranian AD weapons are genuinely modern in the fullest sense of the term, it necessarily follows that Tom Cooper is of the opinion these could neither have been developed nor produced by Islamic Iran. Quod erat demonstrandum.
My statement was therefore 100% accurate.
Another explicit claim, furnishing totally undisputable proof as to the validity of my statement. Don't tell me you endorse this nonsense.
Putting the adjective Iranian into quotation marks and referencing China right afterwards, Cooper is evidently suggesting that the "very advanced radar" was not designed by Iranians but by the Chinese. Again Aristotelian
Λόγος leaves no room for ifs and buts, nor for pedantic terminological hair splitting.
By way of an illustration to his argument, the author is citing the HQ-2 and the HQ-7 SAM's - systems Iran bought and imported from China as is and in full, further underscoring what he means. Not that this is really indispensable to mention though, since the two initial quotations onto themselves prove my point beyond the least shadow of a doubt.
Renewed use of quotation marks as a means of denying the indigeneous nature of radar designs presented by Iran and dismissing declarations of Iranian officials and media in this regard.
What this implies is that Iran did not merely benefit from cooperation and/or technology transfer, but purchased customized radar systems from Chinese companies.
Talks of ground-based, early-warning radars and electronic countermeasures provided by Chinese manufacturers to their export customers i.e. of concrete, ready-made systems and not of technical cooperation.
Clear-cut confirmation of my reminder that Tom Cooper has claimed several of Iran's latest weapons systems had been custom-designed from the outset in China, and are thus not the work of Iranian engineers and production facilities.
No, as perfectly demonstrated above his claims went significantly farther than that. In particular, he very clearly shed doubt on the capability of Iranian domestic research teams and defence industries to design and manufacture the systems in question.
Kindly ditch the confrontational tone. Seeing how I did not address you in such a manner, it would be most welcome if you'd reciprocate.
It's alright if you have a soft spot for the author going by the pseudonym Tom Cooper, this said you'd be hard pressed to suggest his commentary on the Iranian defence industry as well as on the state of scientific research in Iran is actually in line with yours, because this quite ostensibly is not the case. To be clear and in case you didn't notice, I am in agreement with yours but am calling out the author's. That a massive gap separates the two is absolutely obvious.
I highlighted how Tom Cooper's publication tends to create a diametrically opposite impression.
Case in point:
True, SJR isn't mentioned here but that wasn't my point. Fact is that while you opened threads in this forum sharing SJR listings with the rightful purpose of driving home how Iran is excelling in STEM research, the above quoted elucubrations by Tom Cooper are suggesting the exact contrary. So once again, your respective views are not aligning.
