Conservative media in Iran hail attacker Salman Rushdie

Iran’s ultra-conservative newspaper Kayhan on Saturday celebrated the man who stabbed British author Salman Rushdie to death – the target of a 1989 Iranian fatwa calling for his death.

Rushdie was on a ventilator after the attack during a literary event in upstate New York on Friday, more than 30 years after he went into hiding following the fatwa of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

“Bravo to this courageous and dutiful man who attacked the renegade and depraved Salman Rushdie in New York,” wrote the newspaper, whose editor will be appointed by the current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“Let’s kiss the hands of the one who cut the throat of the enemy of God with a knife,” added the daily.

With the exception of the reformist publication Etemad, Iranian media followed a similar line, labeling Rushdie a “renegade”.

The state newspaper Iran said the “devil’s throat” was “cut with a razor”.

Iranian authorities have not yet issued any official comment on the stabbing attack on Rushdie.

But Mohammad Marandi, an adviser to the negotiating team for the Iran nuclear talks in Vienna, wrote on Twitter: “I will not shed tears for a writer who spreads endless hatred and contempt for Muslims and Islam.”

“But isn’t it strange that as we get closer to a possible nuclear deal, the US makes claims about a hit on Bolton… and then it happens?” he asked.

The attack came after Iran earlier on Friday indicated it could accept a final compromise to revive its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. This was preceded by the submission of a “final text” by the European Union in Vienna.

The U.S. Department of Justice said Wednesday it has indicted a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards over allegations that he offered to pay an individual in the United States $300,000 for the assassination of former White House National Security Advisor John Bolton.

Iran dismissed the allegations as “fiction”.

Rushdie, 75, rose to prominence in 1981 with his second novel, Midnight’s Children, which won international praise and the prestigious British Booker Prize for its portrayal of post-independence India, where he was born.

But his 1988 book The Satanic Verses changed his life when Khomeini issued a religious decree ordering his killing.

In 1998, the government of reformist Iranian President Mohammad Khatami assured Britain that Iran would not implement the fatwa.

But Khamenei said in 2005 he still believed Rushdie was an apostate whose killing was authorized by Islam.