Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani speaks in Tehran, Iran. An Iranian government official denied on Monday that Tehran was involved in the attack on author Salman Rushdie, although he justified the stabbing in statements that represented the Islamic Republic’s first public comments on the attack. The comments by Nasser Kanaani, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, came more than two days after the attack on Rushdie in New York. The writer has now been taken off the ventilator and is “on the road to recovery,” according to his agent. But Iran has denied carrying out other operations abroad targeting dissidents in the years since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, despite prosecutors and Western governments blaming such attacks back on Tehran. And while Iran has not focused on the author in recent years, a decades-old fatwa calling for his assassination still stands. “Regarding the attack on Salman Rushdie in America, we do not consider anyone worthy of reprimand, blame or even condemnation, except for him (Rushdi) and his supporters,” Kanaani said. “In this regard, no one can blame the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he added. “We believe the insults made and the support he received was an insult against believers of all faiths.” Rushdie, 75, was stabbed Friday while attending an event in western New York. He suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and eye, his agent Andrew Wylie said. Rushdie was likely to lose the injured eye. His attacker, 24-year-old Hadi Mattar, pleaded not guilty to the charges stemming from the attack through his lawyer. Rushdie has been facing death threats for more than 30 years for ‘The Satanic Verses’. Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa, or Islamic edict, calling for his death. A semi-official Iranian foundation had granted more than $3 million to the author, although it has yet to comment on the attack. Police in New York have yet to provide a motive for the attack, although prosecutor Jason Schmidt referred to Rushdie’s reward when arguing against bail during a hearing on Saturday. “Even if this court were to set bail at a million dollars, we run the risk of the bail being made,” Schmidt said. Matar was born in the United States to parents who immigrated from Yaroun in southern Lebanon near the Israeli border, according to the village’s mayor. Flags of the Iranian-backed Shiite militant group Hezbollah, along with portraits of Hezbollah and Iranian leaders, hang throughout the village. Israel has also bombed Hezbollah positions nearby in the past. In Yaroun, village records show Matar has Lebanese citizenship and identifies as Shia, an official there said. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said Matar’s father still lives there but is in isolation after the attack. In his remarks on Monday, Kanaani added that Iran “has no other information beyond what the US media has reported.” He also implied that Rushdie carried out the attack on himself. “Salman Rushdie exposed himself to popular anger and rage by insulting the sanctity of Islam and crossing the red lines of more than 1.5 billion Muslims and also the red lines of followers of all divine religions,” Kanani said. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, while not directly blaming Tehran for the attack on Rushdie, referred to Iran in a statement early Monday, praising the author’s efforts to support freedom of expression and religion. “Iranian state institutions have incited violence against Rushdie for generations, and state media recently glorified his assassination attempt,” Blinken said. “This is deplorable.” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul condemned the attack on Rushdie in a lecture on Sunday, saying “a man with a knife cannot silence a man with a pen.” Khomeini, in poor health in the last year of his life after the stalemated Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s had decimated the country’s economy, issued the fatwa on Rushdie in 1989. The Islamic decree came amid violent unrest in Muslim world for the novel, which some saw as blasphemous for making suggestions about the life of the Prophet Muhammad. While fatwas can be revised or revoked, Iran’s current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — who succeeded Khomeini — never did. As recently as February 2017, Khamenei said: “The decree is as issued by Imam Khomeini.” Since 1979, Iran has targeted dissidents abroad in attacks. Tensions with the West – particularly the United States – have flared since then-President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled America out of Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018. A drone strike ordered by Trump killed a top general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 2020, further fueling these tensions. Last week, the US indicted in absentia a Guard member who allegedly plotted to kill one-time Trump adviser and Iran hawk John Bolton. Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and an aide are under 24-hour security over alleged threats from Iran. Meanwhile, US prosecutors say Iran tried to kidnap an Iranian opposition activist and author living in New York in 2021. In recent days, a man with a rifle was arrested near her home. Other denials by the State Department include arms transfers from Tehran to Yemen’s Houthi rebels amid that country’s long-running civil war. Independent experts, Western nations and UN experts have traced evidence of weapons back to Iran.
