When the New York Times mocks

"Iran’s top intelligence official on Friday accused Germany and France for the first time of participating in what the Iranian authorities had previously described as an Israeli-British-American plot aimed at assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists."  The silly rhetoric of Iranian clerical kooks aside, what is so crazy about the statement? Is this the first time that US, UK, France, and Germany gang up together with Israel against an Arab or Islamic country? It is too crazy to suggest that Iran is facing an international conspiracy when the conspirators themselves are not shy about their intentions and plots, and when the New York Times itself on its front page covered the US-originated computer virus?  Where is the joke really?  It seems to me that the front-page story (over several days) in the New York Times about the Iranian-American car salesman who hired drug dealers to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, DC was far more funnier.  Which reminds me: whatever happened to that story? Was it seen as too crazy so it was shelved awaiting a better plot scenario?