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Eight months after the start of the “Arab Spring”, the ruling mullahs in Tehran are still wondering how to respond to a tsunami that is changing the political landscape of the region. 

Initially, the mullahs, who believe that history consists of a succession of conspiracies, saw the Arab revolt as a plot hatched by Western intelligence services. 

Official media echoed a view expressed by American conspiracy theorist Noam Chomsky. According to that view “the Imperialist powers” wanted to change their “Arab lackeys” who had grown old and out of touch. In the case of Libya, Chomsky claimed, the US wanted to topple Gaddafi because he had become “unruly”. 

The mullahs’ media reminded their audience that, in 2009, the American “Great Satan” had also tried to topple the Khomeinist regime with a master-plan written by US and European philosophers, among them Michael Ledeen and Jurgen Habermas, with financial support from businessman George Soros. 

When it became clear that the Habermas-Ledeen-Soros trio could not have produced a firestorm in a dozen Arab countries, the Khomeinist media started looking for another explanation. 

The most plausible analysis came from Ali Motahari, a member of the Islamic Majlis, the ersatz parliament in Tehran, who is often sane enough to make one wonder what he is doing in that bedlam. 

He suggested that, perhaps, Arabs had revolted because t... >>>