Politics & Power Quote by Ayatollah Khamenei

Conspiracy here isn`t a side note; it`s the point. By floating "agents of the Americans and Israelis" as the hidden hand behind "horrendous terrorist acts", Khamenei does two things at once: he externalizes moral contamination and reclaims the brand of Islam from images that have politically cornered Iran. The phrasing "seriously suspect" performs a careful kind of insinuation - confident enough to seed certainty, slippery enough to evade the burden of proof. It`s not an argument so much as a fog machine.

The line "cannot believe ... are Muslims" is less theology than boundary policing. Khamenei isn`t debating doctrine; he`s declaring who gets to count. The subtext is strategic: if the most gruesome spectacles are framed as false-flag operations, then the West becomes both perpetrator and propagandist, manufacturing enemies and then selling the war against them. That reframes Muslim violence as reactive, not inherent, and Western power as deceitful, not defensive.

Context matters. Post-9/11, and especially during the rise of ISIS, every Middle Eastern state had to answer for a transnational horror show. For Tehran, the stakes were doubled: Iran wanted to position itself as an anti-ISIS force while also insisting that U.S. and Israeli influence is the engine of regional chaos. Invoking kidnappings in the Philippines and beheadings of Americans widens the theater, suggesting a global script - and a global puppeteer.

It works because it exploits a real history of covert operations and cynical alliances while asking the audience to accept an all-purpose culprit. The result is a rhetorical judo move: outrage is redirected, culpability is reassigned, and skepticism itself becomes loyalty.