We will take that as a compliment

Boris Johnson, the untidy haired Mayor of London, has a good laugh at Ayatollah Khamenei’s “expense”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/5599270/What-has-Ayatollah-Khamenei-of-Iran-got-against-little-old-Britain.html. Johnson is flattered that Khamenei considers Britain still to be a superpower:
bq. Doesn’t it make you almost burst with pride? For decades, we have got used to the idea that we are a dowdy middle-ranking sort of country that long ago abandoned any pretensions to influence east of Suez. We thought we were wholly dependent on America for our nukes and our cryptography–and here’s this top mullah who seems to think that the Tehran protests are being staffed by swarms of burka-wearing Bonds, and that the whole thing is being orchestrated by Dame Judi Dench from her lair on the South Bank.