How has no one mentioned Syria yet? Not saying it's related, but the ramp-up is the only event that fits the time frame.
But this is hardly the first time someone has noticed malware spreading exponentially over the network. Correlation to current newsworthy events may be completely accidental.
I do not believe in jumping to conclusions here. It could be location reporting bias or malware attempting to not piss off (or implicate) certain parts of IP space. But compare Greece https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=direct-users... to Israel https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=direct-users...