Within hours of this week’s attack on the Shiite holy shrine in Samarra, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, blamed it on “intelligence bodies of Iraq’s occupiers and the Zionists.” Hours later Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, appeared on Al-Manar TV also blaming the attack on “U.S. occupation authorities,” while President Ahmadinejad of Iran was certain it was the work of the “defeated Zionists and [American] occupiers.”

During a press conference with the Syrian prime minister, Iran’s vice president, Parviz Davoudi, claimed that the “Zionist hands and the occupiers’ conspiracy are visible in this crime.” On February 26, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid-Reza Asefi, also stated: “We see the hand of the U.S. Ambassador and the Zionist regime in the blast.”

A leading Islamist, Sheik Al-Qaradawi, pointed to “the U.S. occupation and the lurking Zionist enemy,” while a radical Iraqi leader, Muqtada Al-Sadr, accused the American or Iraqi government of blowing up the shrine.

Within hours of the attack, the Tehran Times political desk issued a report that read, “the occupying U.S. regime … is the main element responsible for these criminal acts,” while a leading Shiite Pakistani leader who is the president of Millat-e Jafria Pakistani, Allam Ali Naqui, issued a statement to IRNA explaining the bombing was “a ploy to divert attention of the Muslim world from the Imperialist forces’ diabolical designs against Islam.”

The immediacy surrounding the emergence of conspiracies about the bombing of the Samarra shrine as well as what occurred after world-wide protests regarding the publication of the Muhammad cartoons should come as no surprise. Influential Arab and Iranian figures were quick to blame the usual suspects: Jews; Christians; Zionists, and America.

A Qatar University lecturer, Ali Muhi Al-Din Al-Qardaghi, appeared on Al-Jazeera on February 3 to discuss a Zionist and Christian conspiracy: “We must realize that something bigger than this [cartoon] incident lies behind this campaign. Zionism and the extreme Christian right are behind it … This is a Crusader Zionist campaign, which is led by the extremist pro-Zionist right, headed by George Bush in America … This campaign is an attempt to arouse religious, Crusader fanaticism among Europeans.”

The new Palestinian Authority ambassador in Washington, D.C., Afif Safieh, appeared on CNN’s “Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer” on February 12. He blamed the cartoon controversy on “the pro-Israeli Likud wing around the world who wants to … put on a collision course the Western mainly Christian world.”

In a Friday sermon by Ayatollah Khamenei that aired on Iran’s Channel 1 on February 7, he charged: “That a profound Zionist plot is at the core of the matter … This Crusade is the war of the Christian peoples against the Muslim peoples … Today, I see the Zionist hands are preparing the ground in the Christian countries for this … They also control the newspapers … They are the ones who completely control the American government.”

According to a report in Iran’s Mehr News Agency on February 19, Ayatollah Ardebili explained the printing of the cartoons was “part of a Zionist plot to start a new crusade,” while Ayatollah Nuri Hamedani also said it was “international Zionism’s attempt to sow dissension between Christianity and Islam.”

The secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council, Moshen Reza’i, discussed the cartoon controversy, calling it an “American-Israeli Project,” on February 7 in an appearance on Iranian TV 2, while an article in the Tehran Times of February 4 added: “A careful analysis of similar events around the world over the past five years reveals that the U.S. neoconservatives and the Zionist lobby have formulated a plot to influence public opinion in the West so as to foster animosity between Islam and Christianity … The propaganda campaign inspired certain Christian fundamentalist groups to launch an ideological offensive against Islam.”

IRNA reported on February 13 that a group of Iranians protesting outside the French Embassy in Tehran declared, “We believe the move of the European press in insulting the holy prophet of Islam is a gesture designed by Zionist lobbies and supported by governments of the countries in line with the West’s warmongering polices.” The crowd of Iranian protesters then chanted: “Nuclear energy is our inalienable right, Death to the U.S., Death to France, Death to Israel!”

No matter what tragedy – whether natural or man-made – next plays out in the Middle East, it can be expected that influential Arabs and Iranians will come up with conspiracy theories to explain them. Unfortunately, few voices there have denounced those who are blaming the Jews and Christians for every misfortune that has befallen the Muslim world.

Mr. Stalinsky is the executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute.