News about the downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is reverberating in the streets of Iraq and Iran. Both societies are preoccupied with concerns about democracy and building a civil state. However, reactions took two different directions among Iranian and Iraqi intellectual elite circles.

In Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sent a congratulatory telegram to Egypt's interim president, Adly Mansour, expressing his support for the Egypt’s popular choice. Salman al-Moussawi, an MP in Maliki’s coalition, said, "The reason behind the downfall of Morsi is that he became subject to the control of the Salafists. This proves that the Arab street rejects extremist religious rule.”

Sami al-Askari, a leader in the State of Law coalition, tried to draw a distinction between the different models of religious rule in the region. He said that the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood does not represent a failure of political Islam. Askari’s reaction is an attempt to defend the religious principles of Maliki’s Islamic Dawa Party, which is considered the Shiite equivalent of the Muslim Brotherhood, since it is deeply influenced by the ideas of the latter movement's leaders.

Sheikh Mohammad al-Yacoubi, an active cleric in the political sphere, said that the Egyptian people's revolution re-liberated Egypt from those who have deceitfully hijacked it in the name of Islam. These statements come in the context of a sectarian conflict in the region, during which Shiite political parties criticized the Muslim Brotherhood, although both share the same intellectual and practical principles.