Iran denies involvement in Salman Rushdie attack, blames writer himself

An Iranian government official denied on Monday that Tehran was involved in the assault on author Salman Rushdie, in remarks that were the country’s first public comments on the attack.

The comments by Nasser Kanaani, the spokesman of Iran’s Foreign Ministry, came more than two days after the attack on Rushdie in New York state.

However, 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 attributing such attacks to Tehran.

“We, in the incident of the attack on Salman Rushdie in the US, do not consider that anyone deserves blame and accusations except him and his supporters,” Kanaani said. “Nobody has right to accuse Iran in this regard.”

Rushdie, 75, was stabbed on Friday while attending an event in western New York. He suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and an eye, his agent said. He is likely to lose the injured eye but has been taken off a ventilator and is “on the road to recovery”.

A 24-year-old man, Hadi Matar, has pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from the attack.

Rushdie off ventilator and talking a day after attack, agent says

The award-winning Rushdie faced death threats for years for his novel The Satanic Verses, published in 1988, after Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or Islamic edict, demanding his death.

The edict came amid a violent uproar in the Muslim world over the novel, which some viewed as blasphemously making suggestions about the Prophet Muhammad’s life.

A semi-official Iranian foundation put up a bounty of over US$3 million for the novelist. It has yet to offer any comment on the attack.

Kanaani said Iran did not “have any other information more than what the American media has reported”.

He added that the West “condemning the actions of the attacker and in return glorifying the actions of the insulter to Islamic beliefs is a contradictory attitude”.

Rushdie had, he said, “exposed himself to popular anger and fury through insulting the sacredness of Islam and crossing the red lines of over 1.5 billion Muslims and also red lines of followers of all divine religions”.

Khomeini, in poor health in the last year of his life after the grinding, stalemated 1980s Iran-Iraq war had decimated the country’s economy, issued the fatwa on Rushdie in February 1989. Khomeini died in June that year.

While fatwa can be revised or revoked, Iran’s current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who took over after Khomeini, has never done so. As recently as February 2017, Khamenei said: “The decree is as Imam Khomeini issued.”

Salman Rushdie suspect pleads not guilty to attempted murder and assault

Since 1979, Iran has targeted dissidents abroad in attacks. Tensions with the West, particularly the United States, have spiked since then – President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled America out of Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018.

A Trump-ordered drone strike killed a top Iranian Revolutionary Guard general in 2020, further fuelling those tensions.

Last week, the US charged a Guard member in absentia for allegedly plotting 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 in 2021 to kidnap an Iranian opposition activist and writer living in New York. In recent days, a man with an assault rifle was arrested near her home.

Other denials from the Foreign Ministry have included Tehran’s transfer of weapons to Yemen’s Houthi rebels amid that country’s long civil war. Independent experts, Western nations and UN experts have traced weapon components back to Iran.