Iran: An Iranian government official on Monday made the country's first official public denial of involvement in the attack on author Salman Rushdie.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani's remarks came more than two days after Rushdie was attacked in New York state.
Iran has denied conducting additional operations abroad targeting dissidents in the years following the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution, despite the fact that Western governments and prosecutors have linked Tehran to such attacks.
"We do not believe that anyone other than Salman Rushdie and his supporters is to blame and blame for the attack on Salman Rushdie in the United States," Kanani said. "No one has the right to hold Iran responsible for this."
Rushdie, 75, was stabbed Friday while he was at an event in western New York. According to his agent, his liver was damaged as well as nerves in one arm and one eye. Although the injured eye is likely to be lost, he has been taken off the ventilator and is "on the road to recovery."
Hadi Matar, 24, has pleaded not guilty to charges related to the attack.
The late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for Rushdie to be hanged in a fatwa, or Islamic fatwa, which was published in 1988. As a result, literary award winner Rushdie faced years of death threats because of this.
The order was issued in the midst of a violent rebellion in the Muslim world over the book, which was seen by some as a claim of blasphemy regarding the life of the Prophet Muhammad.
A semi-official Iranian foundation offered a reward of over $3 million to find the author. It has not yet commented on the attack in any way.
According to Canaanite, Iran has "no additional information other than what the US media reports." A contrarian attitude, he continued, is displayed by the West when it "condemns the actions of the aggressor and in turn glorifies the actions of the aggressor of Islamic beliefs."
The author claimed that Rushdie had "ignited popular anger and anger by insulting the sanctity of Islam and crossing the red lines of more than 1.5 billion Muslims, as well as followers of all divine religions."
In February 1989, Khomeini issued a fatwa on Rushdie because he was in poor health in the last year of his life and the 1980 Iran–Iraq War destroyed the country's economy. Khomeini died in June of the same year.
Iran's current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini, has never amended or repealed any fatwa. Khamenei said: "The decree has been issued as Imam Khomeini" as recently as February 2017.
Iranian dissidents abroad have been the target of attacks since 1979. Since then, tensions have risen with the West, particularly the United States. In 2018, President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal with the major powers.
In 2020, tensions escalated when a Trump-directed drone strike killed a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard general.
The US last week indicted a guard member for allegedly plotting to assassinate former Trump adviser and pro-Iranian John Bolton. Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a staff member are constantly on guard due to alleged threats from Iran.
Meanwhile, US prosecutors alleged that Iran attempted to kidnap an Iranian opposition activist and writer who was living in New York in 2021. Recently a man carrying an assault rifle was detained near his house.
The foreign ministry also denied that Tehran supplied weapons to Yemen's Houthi rebels during that country's long civil war. Weapons components have been linked to Iran by independent experts, experts from Western countries and the United Nations..
Iranian Govt denies involvement in attack on Salman Rushdie
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