TEHRAN: Iran on Saturday revelled in US discomfiture at the loss of veteran ally Hosni Mubarak and pointedly igored parallels, bluntly drawn by Washington, between the protest movements in Cairo and Tehran.
Iranian officials trumpeted the fact that the veteran Egyptian strongman's shock resignation after 18 straight days of protests came on February 11 the same day as the 1979 revolution which overthrew the US-backed shah.
And disregarding US accusations of "hypocrisy" in the face of their own crackdown on mass protests in 2009, officials warned Western-backed autocrats across the Arab world that their peoples would bring them down too.
"The coincidence of Mubarak's fall with the triumph of the Islamic revolution shows that the 22nd Bahman (February 11) is a day of victory for nations of the region and it is the day of defeat for America and Zionism in the region," said Supreme National Security Council secrtetary Saeed Jalili.
"Mubarak and his American and European backers heard the voice of the Egyptian people 30 years too late. America and Europe should answer why they supported dictatorship for 30 years," added Jalili, who is also Iran's chief nuclear negotiatior in comments carried by the ISNA news agency.
The speaker of Iran's conservative parliament, Ali Larijani, said the fall of Mubarak and Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in the space of a month was a wake-up call for Western-backed leaders around the Arab world.
"The events in Tunisia and Egypt are an alarm bell for despotic leaders who for years trampled their people and ignored their real demands only to preserve their own interests," Larijani said in a statement.
Iranian officials were unabashed in their trumpeting of the people power overthrow of Mubarak despite US charges of "hypocrisy" given the tight grip they have kept on demonstrations since the wave of protests that followed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's controversial re-election in 2009.
Even before Mubarak's resignation on Friday, Iran's opposition movement had sought permission to hold a rally on Monday in support of the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia which regime supporters derided as a ploy to revive anti-government protests which had been firmly quashed a year ago.
"For all of its empty talk about Egypt, the government of Iran should allow the Iranian people the same universal right to peacefully assemble, demonstrate and communicate in Tehran that the people are exercising in Cairo," National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said.
"The recent arrests and effort to block international media outlets underscores the hypocrisy of the Iranian leadership," he added.
He was alluding to Tehran's jamming of the BBC's Persian-language television channel, ostensibly over its coverage of demonstrations in Egypt, and its reported detention of around 10 opposition activists in recent days.
One of the two main opposition leaders, Mehdi Karroubi, has reportedly been placed under house arrest with even his family and relatives barred from meeting him.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Iran's government was "quite frankly scared of the will of its people."
"We know that what they really are scared of is exactly what might happen," Gibbs said.
Iran instead kept the focus clearly on Mubarak's role as US ally and dogged Israel peace partner styling the protest movement against him as the dawning of a region free of their influence.
"We will soon see a new Middle East materialising without America and the Zionist regime and there will be no room for world arrogance (the West) in it," president Ahmadinejad said on Friday as he marked the anniversary of the ouster of the shah.
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