Following President Ahmadinejad‘s speech at the “A World Without Zionism or America” conference this year (2005), I here start with a gathering of material in regards to Iran. 

In Taghi Modarressi's novel The Pilgrim Ruled of Etiquette, an Iranian intellectual tells a friend of his intention to write about the Iraq-Iran war's historical roots. The friend, a general "looked at the ceiling with a desperate expression" and replied: "You're wasting your time. All wars are a sham. They've struck a deal. All the strategies are decided on the other side of the world. They want to cheat this poor nation. With so much education, how can you be so gullible? ''(Modarressi, New York,1989, p. 171.)  

Homa Katouzian points to "the universal myth- believed by almost every order of urban Iranian society-that any event of the slightest political significance must be the result of a carefully conceived and meticulously executed conspiracy by foreign powers.” (Katouzian, The Political Economy of Modern Iran, 1926-1979, New York University Press, 1981, p. 65).

Kanan Makiya sees the" extreme fatalism ... that may be a characteristic of Islamic culture generally" as a key explanation for conspiracy theories. In his view, this outlook undermines the notion of man as responsible to himself. (Samir al- Khal, Kanan Makiya, Republic Of Fear, 1989, p. 100.) Likewise, Katouzian traces conspiracy theories to an "unimaginable fatalism" (1981, p. 65.)  

Especially the Iranian Shi'i tradition of martyrdom (dhihada), writes anthropologist William O. Beeman, causes Iranians to externalize evil. Corruption occurs when individuals lack the strength to resist these forces from without. "As internal conditions become more and more difficult, the tendency is to search for external conspiracy." (Beeman, Images of the Great Satan, in Nikki R. Keddie, ed., Religion and Politics in Iran, Yale University Press, 1983, p.197).  

Katouzian points to "the universal myth- believed by almost every order of urban Iranian society-that any event of the slightest political significance must be the result of a carefully conceived and meticulously executed conspiracy by foreign powers.” Sattareh Farman Farmaian, an Iranian aristocrat in exile, similarly observes that she and her countrymen are prone to see "foreign poison in every bottle and foreign treachery behind every tree." (Farmaian, with Dona Munker, Daughter of Persia, New York, 1992, p. 201). Marvin Zonis's research during the mid-1960s revealed that Iranians, believed political power in their country to be "really controlled by certain foreign governments." (For an impressive compilation of Iranian conspiracy theories, see Ahmad Ashraf, "Conspiracy Theories," Encyclopedia Iranica.) 

The conspiracy mentality is not easy to quantify or compare, but many Iran specialists believe it more deeply felt in Iran than anywhere on earth. So also Ervand Abrahamian finds the paranoid style "much more prevalent in modern Iran than in most Western societies." (Abrahamian, Khomeinum,1993, p.112. For more quotes testifying to the power of Iranian conspiracism from Lord Curzon, Ann Lambton, Herbert Vreeland, Andrew Westwood, Hooshang Amirahmadi, Marvin Zonis, see ibid., pp. 113-14.)  

Graham E. Fuller of the RAND Corporation notes that while conspiracy-mindedness is "widespread in the Middle East as a whole and in almost any cultures where weakness and suffering at the hands of powerful exterior forces encourage similar attitudes , the art would seem to be raised to a higher level in Iranian culture than in most other countries." So widespread is the assumption of conspiracy, Fuller explains, for an Iranian to ignore it is "(a) to indicate ignorance of the superior forces around oneself or one's nation and (b) to demonstrate the stupidity, naiveté, or insensitivity not to perceive the hidden motives of others." Fuller sees a penchant for the conspiratorial mentality being" a central feature of Iran's political outlook, particularly in international politics" and concludes that "paranoia threatens to insinuate itself into the qualities of a national trait." (Fuller, The Center of the Universe: The Geopolitics of   Iran, 1991, pp. 21, 22, 19.)  

The conspiracy theorist tends toward an outlook in which the battle zone of Good and Evil has no boundaries. Opponents are agents, mishaps result from plots. A Soviet-American summit in November 1985 prompted Iranian President Khamene'i to explain that the great powers, having already divided up the globe, were meeting to iron out minor disagreements. (Tehran International Service, 7 August 1990.)  

A cospiracy theory is the nonexistent version of a conspiracy. Of course during the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79, conspiracy theories multiplied. The Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi refused to see the mass demonstrations in the Iranian streets as signaling hostility to his rule;   when talking with President Jimmy Carter, he blamed his troubles on a "well-planned diabolical plot by those who were taking advantage of his liberalization program." (Pahlavi, Answer to History, 1980, p. 154.)  

Otherwise, he contemptuously rejected Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's claim to be a genuine opposition leader, arguing that he had emerged as a political leader in June 1963 only due to "secret dealings with foreign agents" and that he thereafter remained a proxy for foreign interests. Which interests? Here the shah could not make up his mind. In 1971 he mentioned the possibility of the Iraqis sponsoring Khomeini. Sometimes he held the Western media responsible for his problems; they "of course, never let an opportunity go to play up acts of violence and make them reflect badly on my rule." He saw the international oil companies as "long-time adversaries" and sometimes accused them of seeking revenge for his leadership in the early 1970s, which caused them to lose their Middle East power and wealth. Most of the time, however, he blamed the great powers-the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom. This line of thinking strongly appealed to the shah. "If you lift up Khomeini's beard," he declared, "you will find MADE IN ENGLAND written under his chin." (Pahlavi, 1980, pp. 145-55.)  

And the United States, "Why do they pick on me?" the shah lamented about Americans to his aides in mid-1978. (Quoted in Mansur Rafizadeh, Witness: From the Shah to the Secret Arms Deal, 1987, p. 264.)  

Given the topsy-turvy logic of conspiracy theorists, it stands to reason that the power most closely associated with the shah's government should take the lion's share of the blame for his deposition. The U.S. campaign against him supposedly began in 1959, when the oil companies and the CIA jointly organized Iranian student demonstrations against his rule. But why would the Americans want to harm their ally, then or later? Typical of the conspiracy theorist, the shah offered flatly contradictory explanations. Sometimes he feared (as he confessed to the American ambassador, William H. Sullivan) a "grand design" of the Soviets and Americans to divide Iran. (William H. Sullivan, Mission to Iran, New York, 1981, pp. 156-57.)  

Whatever the exact motive, he remained "convinced that the Western governments had some plan in mind, some grand conception or overview" that would explain his ouster. Nor were the Pahlavis alone in their fears of Washington. Gary Sick, the National Security Council official who handled Iranian affairs during the Carter administration, tells of the many" sophisticated, well-educated Iranians" who invariably asked him, "Why did the United States want to bring Khomeini to power?" (Sick, All Fall Down: American’s Tragic Encounter with Iran, 1985, p. 34.)  

Princess Ashraf of Iran mused on the question why the U.S. government brought down her dynasty in 1979 and concluded, in idiosyncratic English, that they envied what her brother was building in Iran:
I am sure that it couldn't be only the mullahs. It was a concerted effort from the foreigners also. It happened the same thing with my father. It happened the same thing with my brother. There are foreigners who saw that Iran was becoming very important ... and Iran in ten years' time would be another Japan. They couldn't afford another Japan in Asia. (BBC Radio, 16 and 23 March 1982. Quoted in Gary Sick, All Fall Down: America 's Tragic Encounter wilh Iran, 1985, p. 165-66.)  

But definitely conspiracy theories had an even more central place for Ayatollah Khomeini than for the shah. As the shah lay dying in Egypt in June 1980, Radio Tehran speculated that President Carter had paid Anwar as-Sadat to eliminate the shah; perhaps Sadat "has made another deal with Carter and his friends to get rid of the White House's disgrace in these pre-election days." (Radio Tehran, 17 June 1980.)  

The death of over 1,400 pilgrims in July 1990 stimulated a no less implausible Iranian response. The Saudi authorities explained the disaster in the pedestrian tunnel of al-Mu'aysim near Mecca as a simple accident: the passageway had been overcrowded, so the fall of some pilgrims from a bridge precipitated panic. King Fahd attributed the deaths by trampling and suffocation to "God's unavoidable will." In accordance with Islamic law, the Saudi authorities buried the corpses within 24 hours. (Saudi Press Agency, 3 July 1990.)  

The Iranians rejected out of hand this innocent explanation and elaborated three malign scenarios. In the first, a group of pilgrims spontaneously began chanting loudly and in unison "Death to Israel" and "Death to America." To quell the demonstration, Saudi police trapped the offending pilgrims in a tunnel, then slaughtered them. What exactly they used to kill the innocent pilgrims is a matter of dispute. A Tehran radio station mentioned tear gas canisters and rifles; a newspaper wrote of poison gas and automatic weapons. The Saudis expeditiously buried the incriminating evidence. (Sawt al-Mustad'afin, Iran, 6 July 1990.)  

The second explanation began with the premise that Washington desperately fears the politicization of the hajj'rituals, for this spreads radical Iranian ideas throughout the Muslim world. Eager to find a pretext to intimidate radical pilgrims, the Americans pressed their Saudi lackeys to engage in violence. More than that, the Americans actually took charge of security for the haji. (Sawt al-Mustad'afin,Lebanon, 4 July 1990.)  

Third, and most ominously, some Iranians accused Riyadh of massacring pilgrims with an eye to cancelling the hajj ceremonies altogether. Alternately, others speculated that, prompted by American intelligence. the Saudis plan to restrict access to Mecca and thereby turn the hajj into a "recreational tour." (Kayban International, 5,8 July 1990.)  

Seeing Islam as the ultimate bulwark against foreign encroachment, fundamentalists understand the modern West's deep impact on the Middle East not as the inexorable influence of a leading civilization over a more backward. Ayatollah Khomeini announced that:

In their hearts, Westerners want nothing more than to wreck Arab and Iranian economies. The editor-in-chief of a Baghdad newspaper explained this, referring to the situation before the invasion of Kuwait: "the United States had planned to destroy Iraq completely and return it to the pre industrial age, as both former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and President George Bush had promised." (Salah al-Mukhtar, AL-Jumhuriya, Baghdad, 2 August 1994.) 

Khomeini maintained that the U.S. government directs its "all-embracing plots" to undermine Islam. When Juhayman al-'Utaybi and his Islamic fundamentalist followers seized the Great Mosque of Mecca in November 1979, Muslims around the world suspected Western powers of commissioning them to stage a revolt (unwilling, perhaps, to believe that Muslims could commit such an outrage against Islam's holiest sanctuary). It was "not farfetched," Ayatollah Khomeini initially declared, to assume that" criminal American imperialism" had perpetrated the incident. (Radio Tehran, 21 November 1979.) Within a few days, he became more certain: the United States "and its corrupt colony, Israel," stood behind the attempted takeover. (The New York Times, 24 November 1979.)  

But where Arabs and Iranians draw their anti-Semitic and anti-imperialist ideas from the West, they also export these same constructs back to the West. This ping-pong of mutual influence leads to a situation in which some conspiracy theories reverberate between the West and the Middle East, losing plausibility but gaining significance as they ricochet, magnifying and colliding as they move back and forth. 

Thus shortly before Khomeini issued his last Fatwa, Salman Rushdie was shown in a major feature film, meeting with Elders of Zion. Newspaper articles elaborated specific facts about the Elders-for example, that this group, which numbers 12 men, "controls and directs the affairs of all the world's Jewish individuals and institutions including the State of Israel. It keeps its identity and business absolutely secret and operates through a front organization, the World Zionist Organization. The three-hour Pakistani feature film titled , International Guerrillas, showed the Elders of Zion commissioning The Satanic Verses and the police chief of Islamabad (whose forces in February 1989 shot and killed six anti-Rushdie rioters) receiving a suitcase stuffed with a million rupees ($50,000) in cash immediately before giving the order to shoot.  

When European Union solidarity with Rushdie apparently showed the width of the Western conspiracy Rafsanjani explained, "we can see that they wanted to have such an incident and they welcomed it." (Radio Tehran, 15 February 1989.) Khomeini did. In an edict issued on 14 February 1989, called for the execution of Rushdie and "all those involved in its publication who were aware of its contents." More, they were to be killed" quickly, wherever they may be found.” (KayhanHava'i, 22 February 1989.) 

In April 2004 then, the Iranian television station Al-Alam broadcasted Al-Sameri wa Al-Saher, a series that reported as fact several conspiracy theories about the Holocaust, Jewish control of Hollywood, and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  

This was followed more recently by what now is clearly a State sanctioned event hosted by President  Ahmadinejad where he announced the goal of wiping Israel off the map.  

Addressing some 4,000 students gathered in an interior ministry conference hall, Israel is not the only country to wipe out. Ahmedinejad so his announcement, plans to get rid of the US too:  

"... They [ask]: 'Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?' But you had best know that this slogan and this goal are attainable, and surely can be achieved. 

On the poster for the 2005 conference seen underneath one can see that the USA at the bottom of the hourglass, already broken prior, to the fall of Israel:

It is generally accepted that conspiracy theories reveal more about the speaker's unwillingness to take responsibility for himself than about the actual behavior of others. When a person comes upon information at odds with his beliefs, what psychologists call "cognitive dissonance" results. (See Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Stanford, 1957, chapters 8·10 on "the role of social support.")

This situation presents him with two unhappy alternatives: adopt new beliefs to fit the new facts, or find ways justifying the old beliefs. The first response is tantamount to an admission of error and so is difficult to do; as a rational step, it does not concern us here. The second response, which entails an insistence on the validity of one's original belief, is highly tempting, for no one likes to admit error. Conspiracy thinking, Marvin Zonis notes, "can be seen as a means for individuals in the throes of a sense-making crisis to construct a meaningful world after a profound disturbance in self-self-object relationships." (Zonis, "Leaders and Publics in the Middle East: Shattering the Organizing Myths of Arab Society," in Stanley A. Renshon, The Political Psychology of the Gulf War, 1993, p. 287.)

Accordingly, conspiracy theories tend to flourish especially among those buffeted by circumstances, including those inhabiting the fringes of political life and those heavily weighed down by problems. The Muslims' anachronistic sense of historical superiority contained within it the seeds of the paranoid style; the arrogance of one age turned into the agony of the next. The sense that history has gone wrong leads many Muslims to see their fall from grace resulting not from the West's achievements but from its treachery and conspiracy. Wilfred Cantwell Smith explains Muslim outrage at the modern predicament with great insight:

The Islamic tradition was formed on the principle that destiny is in the hands of God, It is Allah who controls events. The Mu'tazilah [a group that flourished in the early Islamic period] and others argued the point: some Muslims have felt that, under God, destiny was in their own hands. The recent bitterness was that it seemed to be neither God nor the Muslims who controlled events but the British or Americans -the domineering, discourteous, brash infidels who suddenly pushed themselves noisily on the scene.

The Muslims' anachronistic sense of superiority contained within it the seeds of the paranoid style; the arrogance of one age turned into the conspiracy mentality of the next. Muslims expected the area of their sovereign rule (Dar al-Islam, the area of all previous Muslim sovereignty) to expand without limit, but instead it almost vanished, prompting dire suspicions. Fundamentalist Muslims tend especially to see modern history as one gigantic trick by the West. In a typical observation, Khamene'i of Iran blames the Muslims' predicament on the "materialist, arrogant, powerful unbridled, selfish, haughty, and bullying hands of the arrogant powers." (John Town Albert, Iraqi News Agency, 4 March 1993.)

By thus blaming their problems on Western evil weakened Muslim peoples find solace and the means to cope with crisis. Conspiracism permits them to escape responsibility for weakness and poverty; were it not for Western intrigues against Islam, they tell themselves, Muhammad's people would still enjoy their former superiority over Europe. Conspiracism allows Middle Easterners to see themselves as powerful but naive, as enervated and exploited by conniving Western agents.

Although grand conspiracy theories surfaced in the Middle East only during the late nineteenth century, it was the early twentieth century, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a book that portrays Jews as a distinct people who pose a danger to the  whole world, that gave anti-Semitism its global underpinnings.

Plots go far to explain how past glories degenerated into today's tribulations. Thus when in 1913 The Young Turks (or, more formally, the Committee of Union and Progress, CUP), deposed, the Ottoman sultan, Abdulhamit II this was explained as a Jewish Conspiracy which would have next inspire the Armenian Holocoast. While all evidence points to the Young Turks being primarily made up of Turkish-speaking, Muslims, even the British ambassador in Istanbul, Gerard Lowther, insisted that the movement was inspired and led by Jews and Freemasons. Middle Eastern Christians first picked up these European notions, then passed them along to Muslims. Already in May 1909, the Syrian Central Committee, a Paris-based Christian group favoring French rule in the Levant, wrote about Jewish and Masonic leadership of the Young Turks; the committee postulated Zionist efforts to destroy the Ottoman Empire in pursuit of a Jewish state in Palestine. Even today, fundamentalists hark back to the Jewish overthrow of Sultan Abdulhamit II as one of the key events in the decline of Islam in modern times and frequently cite it as a leading act of Jewish perfidy. They portray the Ottoman king as a staunch Muslim whom the Jews had to sideline if they were to take over in Palestine.

Yet similar is also claimed otherwise, Bulent Ecevit, the leftist Turkish leader, accused Washington of encouraging Armenians to make territorial demands on both Azerbaijan and Turkey. Why? Because "the United States is planning to give Armenia a role in the Caucasus similar to that played by Israel in the Middle East." (Paraphrased in Mohamed Heikal, The Sphinx and the Commudar: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Influence in the Middle East, New York, 1978, p. 186.)  Nakhichevan's President Haydar Aliyev, seeing Armenia as the U.S. base in the Caucasus, also drew the analogy to Israel. This embryonic parallel to the U.S.-Israel nexus suggests that Israel need not be unique in the Middle Eastern imagination; any non-Muslim can enter the same twilight of puppet and puppeteer.

Each view has its own uses. When ties to Moscow were strong, Damascus stressed the dangers of imperialist plots and variously derided Israel as "a U.S. base," America's "big stick," and "american U.S. aircraft carrier." (Prime Minister 'Abd ar-Ra'uf Kasm, 17 May 1980.)  In contrast, when Damascus sought to improve relations with Washington, it blamed "world Jewry" for subverting American decision making. "The United States does not have a policy of its own in the Middle East," but blindly follows directives issued in Tel Aviv.  Similarly, Sa'd Jum'a, a Jordanian prime minister known for his pro-U.S. views, found it convenient to blame Washington's policy on Zionist agents, whose "constant efforts mislead the ordinary American citizen."

Each explanation has other uses, too. The imperialist thesis helps explain away Israel's military success against the Arab states. As the British writer, David Pryce-Jones observes, "to have been defeated by Jews is humiliating, but to have been defeated by a conspiracy of all the powers is clearly unavoidable."

But again neither the imperialist or the Zionist interpretation is original to the Middle East; both come from Europe. The notion of Israel as a tool of imperialism goes back to Lenin and the early Bolshevik state. A Soviet document from July 1919 called Zionism" one of the branches of the imperialist counter-revolution " (Quoted in Ran Marom, "The Bolsheviks and the Balfour Declaration 1917-1920," The Wiener Library Bulletin, 29, nos. 37/38, 1976: 22.)

As for the notion of Israel as part of a Jewish world plot, it derives from Nazi ideology. As earlya.s the mid-1920s, Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf of his suspicions about the Zionists' ultimate goals: "They do not think at all of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine to live in it someday; rather, they want a central organization for their international world cheating, withdrawn from others' reach-a refuge for convicted dregs and a college for aspiring swindlers." (Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1935), p. 356.) The Nazis found an eager audience in the Middle East for their anti-Semitic message. Hitler's ideology appealed to many there. Already in the mid-1930s, one Arab recalls, Palestinian Arabs "lapped up Fascist and Nazi lies.” (Edward Atiyah, An Arab Tells His Story: A Study in Loyalties, London, 1946, p. 203.)

See also Iran Case Study:

In brief, Middle East politicians still today routinely echo the ideas of Lenin and Hitler, the men who initiated this century's most appalling political experiments. In keeping with the origins of these ideas, leftists tend slightly more to fear an imperialist plot, while those on the right worry more about Zionist conspiracies. Leftists find it natural to make common cause with the Soviet, Chinese, and other bastions of anti-Americanism. The rightist emphasis on the prominent role of American Jews, especially their presence in business, the media, and politics, makes it natural for them to link up with anti-Semitic groups in the West.

Having it two contradictory ways at once recalls The Protocols of the ELders of Zion and Mein Kampf Those writings portray Jews as both the capitalists and middlemen who steal from the workers and as socialists who threaten the bankers.

 

Middle East Case Study:

But where Arabs and Iranians draw their anti-Semitic and anti-imperialist ideas from the West, they also export these same constructs back to the West. This ping-pong of mutual influence leads to a situation in which some conspiracy theories reverberate between the West and the Middle East, losing plausibility but gaining significance as they ricochet, magnifying and colliding as they move back and forth.

Thus shortly before Khomeini issued his last Fatwa, Salman Rushdie was shown in a major feature film, meeting with Elders of Zion. Newspaper articles elaborated specific facts about the Elders-for example, that this group, which numbers 12 men, "controls and directs the affairs of all the world's Jewish individuals and institutions including the State of Israel. It keeps its identity and business absolutely secret and operates through a front organization, the World Zionist Organization. The three-hour Pakistani feature film titled , International Guerrillas, showed the Elders of Zion commissioning The Satanic Verses and the police chief of Islamabad (whose forces in February 1989 shot and killed six anti-Rushdie rioters) receiving a suitcase stuffed with a million rupees ($50,000) in cash immediately before giving the order to shoot.

When European Union solidarity with Rushdie apparently showed the width of the Western conspiracy Rafsanjani explained, "we can see that they wanted to have such an incident and they welcomed it." (Radio Tehran, 15 February 1989.) Khomeini did. In an edict issued on 14 February 1989, called for the execution of Rushdie and "all those involved in its publication who were aware of its contents." More, they were to be killed" quickly, wherever they may be found.” (KayhanHava'i, 22 February 1989.)

 

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