Iran has denied any involvement on the assault of writer Salman Rushdie.
Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
An Iranian authorities official denied on Monday that Tehran was concerned within the assault on writer Salman Rushdie, in remarks that have been the nation’s first public feedback on the assault.
The feedback by Nasser Kanaani, the spokesman of Iran’s International Ministry, come over two days after the assault on Rushdie in New York.
Nonetheless, Iran has denied finishing up different operations overseas focusing on dissidents within the years for the reason that nation’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, regardless of prosecutors and Western governments attributing such assaults again to Tehran.
“We, within the incident of the assault on Salman Rushdie within the U.S., don't take into account that anybody deserves blame and accusations besides him and his supporters,” Kanaani mentioned. “No one has proper to accuse Iran on this regard.”
Rushdie, 75, was stabbed Friday whereas attending an occasion in western New York. He suffered a broken liver and severed nerves in an arm and an eye fixed, his agent mentioned. He was more likely to lose the injured eye.
His assailant, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, has pleaded not responsible to prices stemming from the assault by way of his lawyer.
The award-winning writer for greater than 30 years has confronted demise threats for “The Satanic Verses.” Iran’s late Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa, or Islamic edict, demanding his demise. A semiofficial Iranian basis had put up a bounty of over $3 million for the writer, although it has but to supply any touch upon the assault.
Kanaani added that Iran didn't “have another info greater than what the American media has reported.”
The West “condemning the actions of the attacker and in return glorifying the actions of the insulter to Islamic beliefs is a contradictory perspective,” Kanaani mentioned.
Khomeini, sick within the final yr of his life after the grinding, stalemated Nineteen Eighties Iran-Iraq conflict had decimated the nation’s economic system, issued the fatwa on Rushdie in 1989. The Islamic edict got here amid a violent uproar within the Muslim world over the novel, which some seen as blasphemously making recommendations in regards to the Prophet Muhammad’s life.
Whereas fatwas will be revised or revoked, Iran’s present Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — who took over after Khomeini — has by no means accomplished so. As not too long ago as February 2017, Khamenei mentioned: “The decree is as Imam Khomeini issued.”
Since 1979, Iran has focused dissidents overseas in assaults. Tensions with the West — significantly america — have spiked since then-President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled America out of Iran’s nuclear take care of world powers in 2018.
A Trump-ordered drone strike killed a high Iranian Revolutionary Guard common in 2020, additional fueling these tensions.
Final week, the U.S. charged a Guard member in absentia for allegedly plotting to kill one-time Trump adviser and Iran hawk John Bolton. Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and an aide are underneath 24-hour safety over alleged threats from Iran.
In the meantime, U.S. prosecutors say Iran tried to kidnap in 2021 an Iranian opposition activist and author dwelling in New York. In latest days, a person with an assault rifle was arrested close to her residence.
Different denials from the International Ministry have included Tehran’s switch of weapons to Yemen’s Houthi rebels amid that nation’s lengthy civil conflict. Impartial specialists, Western nations and U.N. specialists have traced weapon parts again to Iran.
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