In Tehran’s first official reaction to the Aug. 12 stabbing attack, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman rejected accusations that Iran inspired the stabbing of the writer, even as Iranian media gloated over his injuries and praised his assailant. Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 revolution that turned the country into an Islamic theocracy, had in 1989 issued a “fatwa,” or binding religious edict, calling for Rushdie’s death for writing his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. “The only thing I can say is that in the history of the attack on Salman Rushdie, I don’t see anyone else to blame or even condemn other than his supporters,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said during the weekly press briefing. in the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported him. “No one has the right to blame the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Rushdie was stabbed by an alleged Islamic Republic supporter during a literary event in upstate New York. He was taken off the ventilator and is recovering from what appeared to be life-changing injuries. The alleged attacker, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, is in custody. The New Jersey man, of Lebanese Shiite descent, allegedly ran up to Mr Rushdie and stabbed him nearly a dozen times in the abdomen, neck and face in front of hundreds of shocked onlookers. Hadi Matar in court on Saturday (AP) The attack highlighted Iran’s history of extremism at a particularly sensitive time when Tehran and world powers are trying to restore a nuclear deal that would lift sanctions on the country. Iran appeared to want it both ways, denying any responsibility for the attack while celebrating. While Iranian officials were tight-lipped, Iran’s tightly controlled regime media praised the attacker and said Mr. Rushdie got what he deserved. As Mr Rushdie clung to life at the weekend, one government newspaper referred to the attack as “the devil’s neck under the sword” while another said the attacker’s hand “should be showered with kisses”. Iran’s Press TV carried an Iranian commentator describing Mr Rushdie as “a Western tool to discredit Islam”. Mohammad Marandi, an Iranian agent in America close to the supreme leader, described Mr Rushdie as a writer who “broadcasts endless contempt for Islam and Muslims” in a tweet and suggested the attack was a false flag intended to derail the nuclear talks. . “I will not shed tears,” he wrote. The outburst of hatred against Mr. Rushdie prompted the condemnation of the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken. “Iranian state institutions have incited violence against Rushdie for generations, and state media recently hailed his assassination attempt,” he said in a press release. “This is deplorable.” Mr Rushdie has been targeted by Iranian leaders and religious institutions for years, and there is still a £3m bounty on his head, forcing the British-American author into hiding for a decade. Under the reformist government of President Mohammad Khatami, Iran announced in 1998 that it would not implement the decree or encourage others to do so. But over the decades, the fatwa against Rushdie has become one of the founding myths of the Islamic Republic. Khomeini’s successor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, endorsed the fatwa in 2017 and sent a tweet supporting it in 2019. Mr Kanani said on Monday that Mr Rushdie himself was responsible for the attack which offended the sensibilities of 1.5 billion Muslims with his writing. “The endorsement of the fatwa by Khamenei and some regime-linked charities shows that Iran’s responsibility does not go back to 1989 but is quite current,” said Ali Fatullah-Nejad, an Iran expert at the American Council on Germany (ACG). “It is clear at least that the attack was inspired by the Islamic Republic.” The Satanic Verses is a surrealist novel inspired in part by the story of the prophet Muhammad and the birth of Islam. In it, a delusional character appears to suggest that a figure other than God inserted some of the verses contained in the Koran, which Muslims consider a holy text. Confusing fiction with theology, some in the Muslim world interpreted the novel as an argument that certain passages in the Koran were dictated by the devil. With its publication, protests broke out across the Middle East and South Asia. Thousands of protesters burned copies of the book in the UK Facing domestic political pressures after the sacrifices and hardships of the recently concluded Iran-Iraq war, Tehran opened fire on Rushdie with the fatwa in what some saw as an attempt to unify the country and assume a leadership role in the Muslim world. “Khomeini’s fatwa was an attempt by the Islamic Republic to claim the issue,” Mr Fatullah-Nejad said. “There was a global appeal to this brand of Islamic extremism.” Iran has also been accused of targeting numerous dissidents and officials abroad, including journalist Masih Alinejad in New York and former US national security adviser John Bolton. However, experts doubt that Tehran’s secret services were behind the Rushdie attack. While Iran has recently been bold about its foreign targets, Mr. Rushdie has been low on Tehran’s priority list, with officials and the media rarely talking about him. “In recent years, Iranians have carried out many attacks abroad, but not an attack on Rushdie,” said Mustafa Kaner, an Iran expert at Sakarya University in Turkey, where Iran has reportedly targeted many dissidents with assassinations and kidnappings. “It is extremely unlikely that Iranian intelligence was behind this attack just as the nuclear deal was coming to a close,” he said. “The Rushdie case just wasn’t that popular.”
