In times of economic and social dislocation, conspiracy theories abound. The sudden uncertainty of events drives ordinary people as well as pseudo-intellectuals, in countries all over the world, to seek explanations for newly revealed political and financial problems in “magical thinking,” blaming the unexpected anxieties of their lives on hidden, dark powers. While convoluted “explanations” for national and world events have proliferated lately in the West, conspiracy theories have long flourished in the lands of Islam.

The clerical misrulers of Iran have particular incentives to indulge in conspiracy thinking. Their own people have clearly repudiated them, and the news from Tunisia and Egypt indicates that Sunni as well as Shia Muslims are overcome by yearning for freedom. Iran’s ruling caste is anxious to project before the global public its particular “interpretation” of the Egyptian turmoil, to its own advantage. Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared in his Friday sermon on February 4 that Tunisian dictator Zine Al-Abedine Ben Ali was overthrown because of his secularism. Hardline Tehran propagandist Hossein Shariatmadari, of the daily newspaper Keyhan, has joined those who see the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions as purely Islamist, and has proclaimed that the motive of the Egyptian protesters is to attack Israel.