By now, you might have assumed that conspiracy theories about the September 11th attacks had become a thing of the past, tall tales relegated to the margins of the blogosphere at best. You would be wrong, though. The latest such screed comes from Tehran, where Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is actively putting his own particular spin on the events of 9/11. “Four or five years ago a suspect event took place in New York,” the Agence France Presse reports Ahmadinejad telling a rally of his supporters yesterday. “A building collapsed and they said that 3,000 people had been killed, whose names were never published. Under this pretext they (the United States) attacked Afghanistan and Iraq and since then a million people have been killed.”

What’s useful to note here — aside from Ahmadinejad’s astounding lack of chronological awareness (we are now approaching the seventh anniversary of 9/11, after all) — is how neatly this argument fits into the larger regional strategy the Islamic Republic is advancing. If the 9/11 attacks never happened, then the U.S. has no reason to be in the region. It is, in effect, an interloper that should be ousted from places such as Iraq. The not-so-subtle message is that, with the backing of countries in the region, the Iranian regime can do just that.

Who says our politicians are the only ones campaigning?