"The Wall Street crash has provoked undisguised gloating among the US’s enemies in the Middle East who claim the global financial crisis is a further sign that the US has lost its superpower status. From Damascus to Tehran, a loose coalition of government officials and clerics view the financial meltdown as the result of divine retribution and the Bush administration’s costly foreign policy in the region, notably the invasion of Iraq." Where did Roula Khalaf get this theologocentric take on Middle East explanations? The only argument of divine intervention that I read was by Daniel Ortega. (I did not like Ortega when he was a Marxist, and I like him less as a pious Christian).