Khamenehi made the remarks Monday in a meeting with a large number of Pasdar commanders and officials.
“The US and the Zionist regime are frightened of the fact that the Islamic system has become a model for the regional people,” he said. “They cannot change the realities on the ground no matter how they try to deny this fact or the Islamic orientation of regional people through their propaganda machine and media outlets.”
Khamenehi and other Iranian officials have been marketing this line almost daily for months. They seem to be trying to convince themselves as well as the Iranian public that the Iranian model is beloved throughout the Islamic world.
News coverage of the various protests around the Arab world, however, have noted the absence of much interest in the Islamist model, let alone the Iranian model. A common chant in Egypt , for example, was “Democracy is the answer,” a clear riposte to the Islamist chant, “Islam is the answer.”
Khamenehi also asserted that the new wave of Islamic awakening will soon extend beyond the Islamic world and crest across Europe and North America. Stories carried in the state media often describe the protests being mounted in the streets of London, Athens and Madrid as the beginning of the Islamic movement in Europe, although those protests are all related to budget cuts.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Khamenehi complained about harsh political speeches made by legislators and executive officers criticizing one another. He said the Islamic system’s institutions and groups should be careful not to fan the flames of disputes and create a commotion over internal disagreements.
“Don’t those who add fuel to the flames see the foreign media’s happiness and joy? It shows that it is a weak point, so we should prevent the continuation (of public disputes),” he said.
