That's a ridiculously narrow and exclusionary definition of conspiracy theories, one that's set up to only include those theories that are clearly delusional.
If you asked a average person three years ago whether they thought that all their calls were being recorded and that the NSA was hacking into companies and stealing data you would have been called delusional and your explanation would have been bizarre and unreal. Yet here we are today with clear evidence that all these things are being done with no repercussions for the perpetrators.
> If you asked a average person three years ago whether they thought that all their calls were being recorded and that the NSA was hacking into companies and stealing data you would have been called delusional
A person can still be operating under a conspiracy theory and talk about pervasive government surveillance. Just because it's true doesn't make it not a conspiracy theory.
But also, for your example, anyone paying attention had been saying, pretty loudly, that governments were surveiling their populations. See, for example, the EU parliament report into ECHELON. We know about ECHELON in the early 1990s. Thus, if someone had said "They've done it before, look at ECHELON, they're probably doing it now" -- that's a reasonable bit of evidence and a reasonable conclusion. If someone says "I hear clicks on my phone line and so the government is spying on me" that's a conspiracy theory (because the evidence is bogus) even though it's true (governments do spy on citizens).
If Iran-Contra was not discovered you'd think it is a 'bizare explanation' and a conspiracy theory. And it was only by a chance that it was discovered. This is even more evident in the case of Watergate.
Thus, Iran-Contra is not a conspiracy theory because it's true, even though it is a conspiracy.