Steven Stalinsky, of MEMRI, notes some rather interesting conspiracy theories in the Iranian press. A summary of conspiracies in his article appearing in The New York Sun:

• A program on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television network last week announced that Israel “murdered” a Lebanese parliament member, Pierre Gemayel, with the help of “four American experts” who work at Beirut’s airport.
• The head of the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., Muhammad Al-’Asi, was on Iranian TV saying that the “American administration” was behind [ed. September 11], while Lebanese Shiite leader Muhammad Hussein Fadhlallah blamed the Jews and some American powers.
• An adviser to President Ahmadinejad, Mohammad Ali Ramin, was quoted in a daily newspaper saying Jewish treachery was behind such ills as the plague, typhoid, AIDS, SARS, and bird flu.
• IRIB reported that more than 10,000 Russian women are kidnapped each year and taken to Israel through Egypt by Zionists, and that each woman is sold for between $4,000 and $10,000.
• The Iranian news channel IRINN asserted that Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean “is a “Zionist conspiracy” by the company to exert cultural influence. Similarly, IRINN ran a special about “Zionist companies” such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Pepsi, which it claimed stands for “Pay Each Penny Save Israel.”
• The secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, was quoted by the Islamic Republic News Agency regarding reports on the “formation of terrorist squads in Brussels by Israel and certain European states for assassination” of Iranian dignitaries.
• On May 19, [ed. during Friday sermons] the Ayatollah Kashani was quoted by the Tehran Times blaming “the CIA” and “Zionists” for terrorist attacks within Iran, and in particular targets connected to its economy, universities, and science.
• IRIB reported on April 5 that ” U.S. troops are distributing boobytrapped dolls among Iraqi children.”
• An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza, was quoted by the Iranian Student News Agency on September 6 stating that terrorist attacks throughout the Middle East “are being guided by the White House.”
• IRNA reported on November 27 that the “apparent discord among Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan is the fruit of a conspiracy by America and the Zionist regime.” [ed. nope, there has never been anything but peace between the Shia and Sunni]
• The Iranian daily Keyhan claimed on November 15 that Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death because he knows many secrets about American activity in the Middle East and that “the neoconservatives have to silence him once and for all.”
• Conspiracies about alleged Israeli activity in Iraq are also common, such as an article titled “Mossad Assassins Targeting Iraqi Scientists” in the Tehran Times, which reported that “more than 2,500 Iraqi scientists over the past 3 years were killed by the Mossad.”
• Another report from IRIB said, “Zionists will be burying nuclear waste in Iraq,” which “is a threat to … the people living in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan.” The report claimed American forces in August burned poisonous substances in Fallujah.

Now how many of these have we here in the U.S. heard of before called by fellow Americans? There are several of the above. Quite sad really.