The Middle East Media Research institute (MEMRI) reports that Arab and Iranian media organs marked the 9th anniversary of the September 11 attacks with theories about U.S. government involvement and anti-Jewish conspiracies. For example:
Iran - The daily newspaper Kayhan, which is close to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, editorialized that the U.S. administration was "planner and executor" of 9/11. The terrorist strikes were "an inside job," serving a pretext for the West "to ignite war in the Middle East."
- Syria - Two columnists for the government organ Al-Thawra suggested the United States was the perpetrator.
Dr. Ibrahim Za'ir wrote that "American intelligence apparatuses" may have carried out the attacks in order to advance President Bush's foreign policy agenda. Za'ir said Washington sought "to start criminal wars under false slogans" like the global war on terror that followed 9/11.
Columnist Khaled Al-Ashhab suggested that "the U.S. itself or Israel" may have "perpetrated the attacks and attributed them to Al-Qaeda." He wondered what would happen if the world learned that the purported victim of 9/11 "is actually the criminal."
Other Syrian commentators suggested that 9/11 was little different from U.S. and Israeli military actions.
"The events of 9/11 in the U.S. were by any criteria a terror operation – as were the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the blockading of countries, and the imposing of sanctions upon them. The war against Gaza was also a terror operation, as was the aggression against Lebanon and the Freedom Flotillas," Teshreen Editor Samira al-Masalma wrote. "What do all these events have in common? The collective killing of innocent, defenseless civilians by the most abominable and destructive means."
- Saudi Arabia - The London-based Saudi daily Al-Hayat published an article by Abd Al-Rahman al-Khatib stating that 9/11 was carried out by American officials or Mossad operatives. He wrote that some Jews "danced and sang with joy" over 9/11 and claimed that "none of the Jews" who worked in the World Trade Center's Twin Towers came to work that day.
In the Saudi daily Al-Yawm, columnist Maghazi al-Badrawi questioned whether al-Qaida and Osama bin-Laden had been involved in the attacks. Badrawi suggested that the United States was using its "status and influence in the world" to conceal the truth about 9/11.
- Kuwait - Writing in the daily Al-Siyassa, attorney Ahmad Yousef Al-Mlaifi claimed that the United States and American Jews were involved in 9/11. "What else, oh America. What else is left on Satan's agenda?" Mlaifi asked. ""Who wants to destroy America? The Jews found what they were looking for – [a tool to] carry out all their crimes across the world. They have turned America into a ladder by which they are accomplishing their goals, and into a pickaxe and a hammer by means of which they are destroying the peoples of the world."
Read the full report here.