Police Source Says Rushdie Stabbing Suspect Was Pro-Iran

The 17-year-old confirmed on his social media accounts in the past few days that he has migrated to the European country. 

Hamid Ataollahi, the secretary of Iran’s Cycling Federation, said on Saturday that the International Cycling Union – known as Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) -- had allocated a berth for a cyclist from Iran but the expenses were supposed to be paid by the cyclist. Shahsavari was introduced to the UCI as a representative from Iran but the federation had not sent him, and he went there on his own, the official added. 

In May, Iran’s Ministry of Sports rejected reports that athletes have to provide a property deed as collateral to be allowed to leave the country for international competitions. 

A member of Iran’s national rowing team, Ahmad Ahmadi said earlier that a notarized pledge to transfer the property is also signed before any trip abroad, adding that the federation also gets two guarantee-of-return undated checks of about $500 and $1,000 from the athletes.

Around 30 Iranian athletes have defected in recent years, seeking asylum in other countries. Some took part in this year’s Olympics in Tokyo as non-state athletes.

In addition to dress code restrictions, another issue forcing Iranian athletes to defect is Tehran’s policy of not allowing them to compete against Israelis, as was the case for Iranian judoka Olympian, and 2018 world champion Saeid Mollaei.

Kayhan is known to be close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s office and its firebrand editor, Hossein Shariatmadari, is Khamenei’s appointee and representative at the flagship ultra-conservative paper.

The Iranian government has not officially reacted to the stabbing of the renowned writer who has been haunted for 33 years by a death edict issued by Iran’s former leader Ruhollah Khomeini. His book, the Satanic Verses was deemed as blasphemy against Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

Government media in their reporting did not condemn or express dismay at the attack seriously injuring Rushdie, who has probably lost one eye and is still not out of danger.

“The news is not good,” Andrew Wylie, Rushdie’s representative announced. “Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.”

The official government news website IRNA praised a man who in the past had tried to kill the British-American author and indirectly praised Friday’s attacker Hadi Matar. Government media also published articles trying to justify Khomeini’s fatwa condemning Rushdie to death and used words like “apostate” to describe him.

Iran International reported on Friday that Mohammad Marandi, an American-born academic who has acted as a spokesman-cum-advisor for Iran in nuclear talks in Vienna, tweeted he would not be “shedding tears for a writer who spouts hatred & contempt for Muslims & Islam.”

Marandi called Rushdie a “pawn of empire” and suggested it was “odd” the attack should occur just as agreement on restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was “near.”

The Asr Iran news site on Saturday carried an often-cited quote by Khamenei that said the "arrow" shot by Khomeini "will one day hit the target".

The headline of the hardline Vatan Emrooz newspaper read: “Knife in Salman Rushdie’s neck”.

The Khorasan daily carried the headline: “Satan on the way to hell”.

Although US law enforcement agencies have not assigned a motive to the attacker, Fox news published a photo of his fake New Jersey driver’s license that bore the name Hassan Mughniyeh. This can offer a clue to his motive. Imad Mughniyeh was a wanted Hezbollah terror operative who was assassinated in Syria in 2008. Other reports alleged that Matar’s social media accounts show his support for the Iranian brand of Shiite causes, including support for the Revolutionary Guard.

Pro-Iran and Pro-Hezbollah social media feeds began praising Matar, who was is said to have Lebanese roots, but there is still no information about his family history. One account described him as a “Lebanese hero who stabbed Satan Salman Rushdie,” according to Algemeiner.

While it is not clear if his religious beliefs led him to attack Rushdie or if he had links to any militant group, Iran’s long-standing edict to eliminate Rushdie could be a motivating force for religious extremists.

Matar who grew up in California is said to be a devout Muslim. The Daily Beast quoted a former classmate, Gabrial Sanchez as saying that while in school Matar “was a very devout Muslim,” but he never spoke about Rushdie or Iran.

The Daily Beast also reported that Matar apparently took up boxing training in April at a club. He also obtained his fake drivers license in May, which could point to some degree of planning for a violent or illegal act similar to what he eventually did on Friday.

In response to a Thursday letter from Ziyad al-Nakhalah, Secretary General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement, Khamenei said on Friday that the group’s perseverance in its recent conflict with Israelhas elevated the its status among other Palestinian factionsand proven that “each segment of the Resistance block is able to rub the enemy's nose to the ground on its own.”

Palestinian militant groups and other Iranian allies and proxies are often referred to collectively as the “Resistance” in Iranian official’s jargon.

The Iranian leader also stressed the need for maintaining the unity of all Palestinian groups. “You by linking the fight in Gaza with the West Bank, and other forces of the Resistance with their support for the Jihad movement, have been able to demonstrate the solidarity of the Palestinian nation’s jihad to the malicious, deceptive enemy. Palestinian groups in all the Palestinian lands should direct all their efforts towards protecting this solidarity,” he added.

“The usurping enemy is becoming weaker, while Palestinian Resistance is becoming stronger,” he wrote.

The latest bout of violence has been the most serious flare-up between Israel and Gaza since an 11-day conflict in May 2021 that left more than 200 Palestinians and a dozen Israelis dead.

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid last week called the Islamic Jihad an Iranian proxy that wants to destroy Israel, noting that Israel has a zero-tolerance policy for any attempted attacks from Gaza.

Khamenei had not commented about the Israeli-Palestinian issue while Tehran’s negotiators were trying to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal in Vienna.

In April, Khamenei’s adviser Ali Akbar Velayati called for closer ties between Tehran and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, designated a terrorist organization by the US, EU, and UK, during a meeting with the leader of the group Ziyad al-Nakhalah in Tehran last week.

In a letter to Iran's supreme leader earlier this week, Nakhalah highlighted the presence of Palestinian fighters throughout the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in a united front against Israeli forces.

“We dubbed the recent bout of violence ‘Wahda al-Sahat’ (Unity of the Arenas) to emphasize the unity of our nation against the enemy, which through all available means and conspiracies is trying to destroy it,” Nakhalah wroteabout the recent clashes between his group and Israeli forces.

“This battle frustrated the Zionist regime's appraisals to such a large extent that after just three days they were forced to ask for a ceasefire and to accept the terms set by the Resistance,” Nakhala wrote while boasting that Israel failed to divide Palestinian groups and all of them including Hamas approved of the Islamic jihad's stance and supported it.

However, the reality was that Hamas largely stood on the sidelines and hundreds of missiles first from Gaza were ineffective, while Islamic Jihad’s military leadership was wiped out by Israeli targeted strikes.

In his letter to Khamenei, Nakhala also lauded Iran's support as well as the role played by Iran's proxy, the Lebanese Hezbollah, and its leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah.

The Political Studies Bureau of the Iranian parliament’s Research Center in a new paper published Wednesday said that the 700 missiles fired at Israel from Gaza during the new round of conflict proves that any future “adventurism will be very costly” to Israel.

“The news is not good,” Andrew Wylie, Rushdie’s agent, said late Friday. “Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.”

Rushdie, the subject of a ‘death sentence’ issued by Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, was airlifted to hospital after being stabbed repeatedly at around 11am local time as he was about the deliver a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution, New York state.

Police reported that a state trooper at the event took the attacker into custody after what witnesses said was an assault lasting 20 seconds. An endocrinologist in the audience told the New York Times that Rushdie had multiple stab wounds, including one to the right side of his neck.

Police later named the suspect as Hadi Matar, a New Jersey resident aged 24, and said they were investigating his motive.

While the official news agency IRNA reported the attack only briefly, Mohammad Marandi, an American-born academic who has acted as a spokesman-cum-advisor for Iran in nuclear talks in Vienna, tweeted he would not be “shedding tears for a writer who spouts hatred & contempt for Muslims & Islam.”

Marandi called Rushdie a “pawn of empire” and suggested it was “odd” the attack should occur just as agreement on restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was “near.”

Fuel to the flames

Khomeini’s edict was February 14, 1989, after the publication of Rushdie’s third novel, The Satanic Verses. While the book had already produced protests in Islamabad, Pakistan, in which at least six people died, Khomeini’s ‘fatwa’ added fuel to the flames, with widespread protests.

While Rushdie went into hiding for six years, his Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi was stabbed to death in 1991, while his Italian translator survived a knife attack the same year. Tehran’s Behesht Zahra cemetery has a shrine for Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh, born in Guinea, was died in London in August 1989 when priming a book bomb in London apparently for an attack on Rushdie.

Reformist president Mohammad Khatami in 1998 assured London that the Iranian authorities would not assist anyone attempting to carry out the death sentence. But Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini in 1989 as supreme leader, made clear on several occasions the edict remained in force.

Best foreign novel

Ironically, Khamenei, when president in 1985, had announced Iran’s award of its best foreign novel prize for Rushdie’s third novel, Shame. But Iran’s leader has not wavered over Khomeini’s edict, including endorsing it in a tweet in 2019, which led to the temporary suspension of his account.

Semi-official bodies have never forgotten Rushdie. In 2012, it was widely reported that the 15 Khordad Foundation, a quasi-official religious body in Iran, had increased an existing bounty offered for killing the novelist from $2.8 million to $3.3 million, an amount raised by $600,000 by Iranian media bodies in 2016.

Iran Daily in February praised the “deep understanding, true attitude and reliable future vision” of Khomeini in issuing the edict, which had encouraged Muslims to show that “if they are led properly, can be the pioneers of the revival of religious values ​​and stand up against the hatred spread by the West against Muslims.”

Rushdie, who was born in Kashmir and grew up a Muslim, has lived in New York for the past 20 years. When he was knighted by the British Queen Elizabeth in 2007, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda leader killed July 31 by an American drone stroke in Kabul, promised “a very precise response.”

‘Stupidly optimistic’

In an interview last year with the Guardian newspaper, Rushdie called himself “stupidly optimistic”and suggested the “first people to suffer” from “censorship…are underprivileged minorities.”

“One thing I feel, well, proud of, let’s say, is if you knew nothing about my life, if all you had were my books, I don’t think you would feel that something traumatic happened to me in 1989,” Rushdie said. “I’m glad I had the brains to think, in the middle of all that, I don’t want to be the victim of this. I could write frightened or revenge books, and both would make me a creature of the event. So, I thought, Be the writer that you want to be.”

The woman, who was arrested for spying for Iran in December, attempted to take her own life while under house arrest at her home in Holon on Thursday, Hebrew media reported. Paramedics arrived at her home and found that she had tried to overdose on pills.

The Shin Bet security service said in January that five Jewish Israelis had been detained on charges of assisting an Iranian operative in gathering intelligence and making connections in Israel. The operative, going by the name of Rambod Namdar, maintained profiles on social media sites and pretended to be Jewish. What could be more worrying for the Israeli authorities is that some of the suspects seem to have known or suspected that Namdar was an Iranian operative, but agreed to cooperate for small sums of money, ranging from $900 to $5,000, a Shin Bet official said at the time.

Two of the suspects -- all of Iranian heritage -- include the woman from Holon and her husband, whose names are barred from publication. The wife, who worked as a presenter at a radio station, was in contact with Namdar and passed along photos of government offices over the course of several years, while her husband was accused of being aware of the connection, speaking with the Iranian operative himself, as well as transporting her to the US Consulate to photograph it.

The husband denied the accusations during an interview with Channel 12 news on Thursday evening following his wife’s suicide attempt, and accused the Shin Bet of extracting a false confession from her, saying, “For the past eight months, our life has turned into hell.”