ABSTRACT
Innocent of the Middle East's paranoid style, Americans during the 1960s and 1970s inadvertently did just about everything to confirm Iranian fears of plots. The huge size of the official American presence and its proximity to the central institutions of power, economics, and culture eased the way for the opposition to direct populist rage against Americans. The US government is blamed for so much that goes wrong in the Middle East means that conspiracy theories bear many implications for it. The real danger of conspiracy theories lies not in how many people believe but in how many refuse to oppose the idea. Conspiracy theories foster a widespread suspicion that some Muslim rulers are manipulated by foreign powers; accordingly, even a modicum of overt influence is taken as evidence of huge covert influence. By far the most sensitive and risky issue concerns the possible exploitation of conspiracy theories by the US government.
