Ouch. No sooner had the riots started in London than delighted international onlookers began to revel in schadenfreude.

It started with the Times of India fretting about the safety of holding the 2012 Olympic Games in the city: the similarity in tone to the handwringing in British papers about Delhi's preparations for the Commonwealth Games in 2010 may have just been a coincidence.

Despite having to deal with its own riots in 2005, the Australian government warned visitors to London of "violent riots, looting and arson" and advised them to "monitor the media for information on possible new safety or security risks".

Russia, however, was firmly putting the boot in. Pravda's English-language website asked, "London riots: Divine justice?", and linked the situation with the UK's decision to topple Libya, while another article was headlined: "Britain falls victim to its own cult of absurd tolerance".

China's government did little to hide its delight either. One commentator in the Communist Party's People's Daily crowed: "The West have been talking about supporting internet freedom, and oppose other countries' government to control [these] kind of websites, now we can say they are tasting the bitter fruit [of their complacency] and they can't complain about it," according to the Telegraph's blog.

But the prize for the smuggest reaction must go to Iran, a nation still smarting from condemnation of their own brutal crackdown on demonstrations over a contested election. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's foreign ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, called on the police in the UK "to exercise restraint and behave in a controlled way". He then advised "the British government to start dialogue with the protesters and to listen to their demands." Finally, he suggested that an independent human rights organisation be allowed to investigate the killing of Mark Duggan "to protect the civil rights and civil liberties".