What do you make of this?
Russia and Iran delight in UK's rejection of EU
World leaders beyond the EU began the process of Friday of adjusting their relationship with the UK in the wake of the vote to leave, in reaction that ranged from trepidation to barely disguised glee in Moscow and Tehran.
A top military official in the Iranian capital predicted that Scotland and Ireland would soon be free of “the tyrannical rule of the monarchy, the so-called Great Britain”.
Moscow’s mayor, Sergey Sobyanin, took a rosier view. “Without the UK in the EU there won’t be anyone to so zealously defend the sanctions against us,” he said.
Russia’s presidential business ombudsman, Boris Titov, said: “Leaving will tear the EU away from the Anglo-Saxons, that is from the US.” Reacting to sterling’s slide on the foreign exchanges, a Russian state TV anchor observed drily: “It’s no joke. The pound is the new rouble.”
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, sought to rebut suggestions that Brexit and the consequent weakening of the EU played into his hands.
Speaking to reporters on a visit to Uzbekistan, he said it would have “positive and negative consequences” for Russia and that “the situation will correct itself in the near future”. He put the outcome down to Britain’s concerns over migration and security, and dissatisfaction with EU bureaucracy.
In Tehran, Hamid Aboutalebi, a senior political aide to the country’s president, Hassan Rouhani, tweeted that Brexit created a “historic opportunity” for Iran, but did not elaborate on how the country could benefit from the situation.
The deputy chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Massoud Jazayeri, was quoted by the Fars news agency as saying “the European Union is a pawn in the hands of America”.
“England should pay the price of years of imperialism and committing crimes against humanity,” Jazayeri said, saying that the price would be Scotland and other parts of the UK demanding independence. “The people of Ireland, Scotland and others have the right to bring themselves out of the tyrannical rule of the monarchy, the so-called Great Britain”.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics...an-delighted-at-uks-rejection-of-eu?CMP=fb_gu