https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-satanic-stabbing-of-salman-rushdie-and-the-dangerous-iran-deal/
The attempted murder on Friday of Salman Rushdie is the latest in a string of appalling incidents that ought to put the United States and its P5+1 partners to shame for their efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with the evil regime in Tehran.
Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses“—the 1988 book that earned him critical acclaim in the West and a fatwa for his annihilation from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini—was about to address a large audience at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York when he was tackled and stabbed multiple times by a radical Muslim enamored of Iran.
Despite ridiculous reports of an unclear motive for the attack, the 24-year-old perpetrator, Lebanese-American Hadi Matar of New Jersey, made no bones on social media about his support for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The only question is whether he plotted the killing purely for ideological reasons or also had his eye on the $3.3 million bounty on Rushdie’s head. Perhaps both, as they are not mutually exclusive.
His affinity for the IRGC and proxies was also apparent in his choice of name on the phony driver’s license he used as an ID to enter the premises: Hassan Mughniyah. The alias was a tribute to two arch-terrorists, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and Imad Mughniyah, the former head of the Iran-backed, Lebanon-based organization’s international operations, whose assassination in Damascus in 2008 has been attributed to the Mossad.
Though Matar appears to have acted alone, Iran’s state-run media and hardline pundits have been praising him to the skies for knifing the “apostate.”
The significance of the bloody assault, from which the 75-year-old Rushdie may not recover, is in its timing. Two days earlier, the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) filed criminal charges against 45-year-old Iranian national and IRGC member Shahram Poursafi for trying late last year to hire individuals in Washington D.C. and Maryland to kill former American officials John Bolton and Mike Pompeo.
According to the DOJ, the foiled plot was “likely in retaliation” for the U.S. air strike that killed IRGC Quds Force commander Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. Since that time, the IRGC has been vowing to take revenge on America.
As the Rushdie fatwa illustrates, Iranians have a long memory; in this sense, Soleimani’s death is not only fresh in their minds, but will remain so for decades. Indeed, even Tehran’s denial of the targeting of Bolton and Pompeo includes a reference to Soleimani.
