The Kayhan newspaper, whose editor is personally handpicked by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has suggested that after Rushdie, “now it’s Trump and Pompeo’s turn.” “God took his revenge on Rushdie. The attack on him shows that it is not a difficult task to exact similar revenge on Trump and Pompeo, and from now on they will feel more at risk for their lives,” reads today’s front page article in the newspaper. In January of this year, on the first anniversary of the killing of Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi publicly threatened Trump and Pompeo with retaliation. “If the conditions for a fair trial of Mr. Trump and Mr. Pompeo and other criminals become available, they will be charged with the commission of this heinous crime and face the consequences of their criminal acts. “However, let there be no doubt that I am here telling all American politicians that the hand of vengeance will eventually come up our nation’s sleeve.”
Assassination plot ‘real and ongoing’
Iran’s attempts to assassinate former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “are real and ongoing,” his successor, Anthony Blinken, told the US Congress in April.
Although the motive behind Rushdie’s attack is still unclear, Iranian opposition forces in exile have no doubt that the stabber was influenced by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s death sentence on Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses.
“These fatwas about killing people whose ideas you don’t agree with are nothing new in the history of Islam in Iran,” Dr. Abbas Milani of Stanford University told London-based Iran International TV.
“They have been issued by fanatical and extremist religious leaders against dozens of Iranian writers and intellectuals as well. But to issue it against citizens of foreign and democratic countries is simply despicable and tantamount to religious fascism,” Dr Milani said.
Iran’s current leadership has never rescinded the fatwa, claiming it “remains valid as a decree of a grand ayatollah.”
The front page headline of the Kayhan newspaper is: “God took his revenge on Rushdie. It’s Trump and Pompeo’s turn.”
The attack ‘may have been a US plan’
On Sunday, the ultra-conservative daily Javan claimed that the attack may have been a plot hatched by the Americans. “Maybe a young Muslim, who wasn’t even born when Salman Rushdie wrote his satanic book, wanted to take revenge on him,” he said. Hadi Matar, the 24-year-old man accused of stabbing Rushdie, pleaded not guilty to attempted murder charges on Saturday. “Another scenario is that the United States probably wants to spread Islamophobia around the world,” Javan wrote. Iranian authorities have been completely silent on the attempted assassination of the British-American author who was stabbed around 10 times in what US authorities have called a premeditated attack. Thierry Coville, an Iran expert at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs, said he did not believe the authorities were involved. “I don’t see the hand of the Iranian state in this attack, but what is certain is that it will increase mistrust of Iran in the United States,” he said.
