So it would seem that Opera won't be allowed to interpret Javascript, making it pretty useless as a general purpose browser.
Opera Mini takes a different approach to web browsing. The pages are rendered in some kind of image format on Opera's proxy servers and then sent in compressed format to the browser. So load times are probably better, but it probably works well only with static web pages. And not web apps.
So there shouldn't really be any reason for it to be rejected. At least not on the grounds that its running an interpreter or higher level language framework.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini
Opera Mobile on the other hand is a traditional web browser for mobiles in the same way that Safari is.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini#JavaScript_support:
Opera Mini has limited support for JavaScript. Before the page is sent to the mobile device, its onLoad events are fired and all scripts are allowed a maximum of two seconds to execute. The setInterval and setTimeout functions are disabled, so scripts designed to wait a certain amount of time before executing will not execute at all. After the scripts have finished or the timeout is reached, all scripts are stopped and the page is compressed and sent to the mobile device. Once on the device, only a handful of events are allowed to trigger scripts: onUnload, onSubmit, onChange, onClick
Unfortunately, it also means it's a completely crippled browser. Why anyone would WANT to use it instead of something fully functional (like Safari) is beyond me. The days of squinting at tiny mobile versions of websites on a 2x1 cell phone screen are behind us, and good riddance. It would appear that Opera Mini is already obsolete on the iPhone due to its very architecture.
Granted neither of these cases are exactly everyday occurrences for your average iPhone owner, but for those people who find themselves in the above situation, having something like Opera mini to fall back on would be very handy.