“On the attack on Salman Rushdie, we consider no one but [Rushdie] and his supporters are worth blaming and even condemning,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said at a televised news conference on Monday, marking the country’s first public reaction to the incident.
“We have not seen anything else about the individual who carried out this act other than what we have seen in the US media. We categorically and seriously deny any connection of the attacker to Iran,” Kanaani said, according to Iranian state media.
Rushdie, an acclaimed British author born in India, has received death threats for decades after Iran issued a fatwa, or religious decree, calling for his assassination following the 1988 publication of his book The Satanic Verses. . He spent almost a decade living under British protection before moving to the United States in recent years, and was stabbed repeatedly during an attack on stage in western New York on Friday.
The suspect, identified as Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, New Jersey, pleaded not guilty Saturday to attempted second-degree murder and other charges.
While Iran did not officially comment on the attack over the weekend, several hardline Iranian newspapers praised the suspect on Saturday, including the conservative Kayhan newspaper, whose editor-in-chief is appointed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei .
“A thousand bravos, a hundred God bless. His hand must be kissed… Bravo to the warrior and obedient man who attacked the apostate and evil Salman Rushdie. The warrior’s hand must be kissed. He tore the vein in Rushdie’s neck.” the paper said.
Another hard-line newspaper, Khorasan, ran a headline, “The Devil on the Road to Hell,” while showing a picture of Rushdie on a stretcher.
The son of a successful Muslim businessman in India, Rushdie was educated in England, first at Rugby School and later at Cambridge University, where he graduated with a degree in history.
The publication of “The Satanic Verses” in 1988 made him a household name and gave him notoriety. Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued the fatwa against him a year later.
The bounty against Rushdie has never been lifted, but in 1998 the Iranian government tried to distance itself from the fatwa by promising not to try to carry it out.
But in February 2017, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reaffirmed the religious edict.
And in 2019, Khamenei tweeted that he said Khomeini’s fatwa against Rushdie was “solid and irrevocable,” prompting Twitter to place a restriction on his account.
CNN’s Lauren Said-Moorhouse contributed to this report.