CAIRO, Oct 11: America’s opponents in the Middle East are gloating at the financial meltdown in the United States, describing it as the divinely inspired collapse of an overstretched empire.

Hardline clerics across the region as well as representatives of US opponents like Hamas and Al Qaeda have described the plummeting stocks and frozen credit markets in the United States as a kind of retribution for American misdeeds.

“We are witnessing the collapse of the American Empire,” Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister in the Gaza Strip, told worshippers during Friday prayers. “What’s going on in America is a result of the violation of the rights of people in Palestine, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Muslims around the world.”

Haniyeh’s comments followed those made by other regional leaders who have long had an antagonistic relationship with the US and appear to be enjoying the country’s troubles.

However, the financial meltdown has not left the region unscathed, with stock markets across the Middle East dropping more than 10 per cent in the past week.

In an interview on Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described America’s problems as a matter of chickens coming home to roost after years of exporting inflation and deficits to the rest of the world.

“Now the world capacity is full and these problems have returned to the US,” he said. “And finally they are oppressors, and systems based on oppression and unrighteous positions will not endure.”Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a high-level Iranian cleric, was more blunt when he addressed worshippers on Oct 3, describing the situation as God’s punishment.

“We are happy that the US economy is in anarchy and the anarchy is reaching Europe,” said Jannati. “They are seeing the result of their own ugly doings and God is punishing them.”

The Iranian government has said the financial crisis is not hurting Iran’s economy. But the turmoil has helped drive the price of oil down more than 40 per cent since record highs in July. The Iranian government relies on oil revenue for 80 per cent of its budget.Al Qaeda, America’s arch-nemesis in the region, was one of the first to express satisfaction over the financial crisis in a half hour video message early in the month.

“The enemies of Islam are facing a crushing defeat, which is beginning to manifest itself in the expanding crisis their economy is experiencing,” said American Al Qaeda member Ahmed Gadahn.

Gadahn blamed the crisis on the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Americans “turning their backs on Allah’s revealed laws, which forbid interest-bearing transactions, exploitation, greed and injustice in all its forms”.

This sentiment was even heard in US-ally Lebanon, where a hardline Sunni cleric saw the financial collapse as God answering the prayers of the Muslims.

“God has responded to the supplications of the oppressed people,” Mufti of Mount Lebanon Sheik Mohammed Ali al-Jouzo told the state-run news agency on Thursday. “It is the curse that hits every arrogant power.”—AP