A top Iranian think tanker closely associated with Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is accusing Jews of using witchcraft to undermine stability and solidarity inside the Islamic republic:

“The Jews are currently subjecting us to an unprecedented trial,” [Mehdi] Taeb said, according to a translation provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute. “As you read in the Koran, [King] Solomon ruled the world… and God ordered a group of sorcerers to come out against him. The Jews have the greatest powers of sorcery, and they make use of this tool. “The Jews are currently subjecting us to an unprecedented trial,” Taeb said, according to a translation provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute. “As you read in the Koran, [King] Solomon ruled the world… and God ordered a group of sorcerers to come out against him. The Jews have the greatest powers of sorcery, and they make use of this tool.

Taeb noted that the sorcery failed on account of Iranian strength, but he emphasized that caution was necessary because “the Jews” had not yet used their full supernatural abilities.

An article published in March on the Iranian news site Rasanews.ir asserted that Jews have learned divination from “various peoples in the course of history” and that they use sorcery in their attempts to “conquer nature and control the world.”

In recent years Iranian media has accused Jews of injecting viruses into Palestinians and being behind 9/11. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also accused foreign enemies of the regime of destroying Iran’s clouds.

The prevalence of fringe anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in elite Iranian discourse sits uneasily alongside foreign policy analysis which holds that the Iranian regime is guided by pragmatic realists.

[Photo: Mattes / Wiki Commons]