Iran denies being involved in attack on Salman Rushdie
Iran denies being involved in attack on Salman Rushdie/node/2142911/middle-east
Iran denies being involved in attack on Salman Rushdie
Rushdie, whose controversial writings made him the target of an Iran fatwa that forced him into hiding, was stabbed in the neck by an attacker in New York state. (File/AFP)
Iran denies being involved in attack on Salman Rushdie
Updated 15 August 2022
AP
TEHRAN, Iran: An Iranian government official denied on Monday that Tehran was involved in the assault on author Salman Rushdie, in remarks that were the country’s first public comments on the attack.
The comments by Nasser Kanaani, the spokesman of Iran’s Foreign Ministry, come over two days after the attack on Rushdie in New York.
However, Iran has denied carrying out other operations abroad targeting dissidents in the years since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, despite prosecutors and Western governments attributing such attacks back to Tehran.
“We, in the incident of the attack on Salman Rushdie in the US, do not consider that anyone deserves blame and accusations except him and his supporters,” Kanaani said. “Nobody has right to accuse Iran in this regard.”
Rushdie, 75, was stabbed Friday while attending an event in western New York. He suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and an eye, his agent said. He was likely to lose the injured eye.
His assailant, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, has pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from the attack through his lawyer.
The award-winning author for more than 30 years has faced death threats for “The Satanic Verses.” Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa, or Islamic edict, demanding his death. An Iranian foundation had put up a bounty of over $3 million for the author.
Kanaani added that Iran did not “have any other information more than what the American media has reported.”
Freedom of speech does not justify Rushdie's insults upon religion in his writing, Kanaani said.
The West “condemning the actions of the attacker and in return glorifying the actions of the insulter to Islamic beliefs is a contradictory attitude,” Kanaani said.
Israeli minister calls West Bank measures ‘de facto sovereignty,’ says no future Palestinian state
Eli Cohen’s comments on Tuesday suggest these steps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state
alestinians, Arab countries, and human rights groups view the actions as annexation
Updated 4 sec ago
AP
RAMALLAH: A top Israeli official said Tuesday that measures adopted by the government that deepen Israeli control in the occupied West Bank amounted to implementing “de facto sovereignty,” using language that mirrors critics’ warnings about the intent behind the moves. The steps “actually establish a fact on the ground that there will not be a Palestinian state,” Energy Minister Eli Cohen told Israel’s Army Radio. Palestinians, Arab countries and human rights groups have called the moves announced Sunday an annexation of the territory, home to roughly 3.4 million Palestinians who seek it for a future state. Cohen’s comments followed similar remarks by other members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defense Minister Israel Katz. The moves — and Israeli officials’ own descriptions of them — put the country at odds with both regional allies and previous statements from US President Donald Trump. Netanyahu has traveled to Washington to meet with him later this week. Last year, Trump said he won’t allow Israel to annex the West Bank. The US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that aimed to stop the war in Gaza also acknowledged Palestinian aspirations for statehood. Widespread condemnation The measures further erode the Palestinian Authority’s limited powers, and it’s unclear the extent to which it can oppose them. Still, Hussein Al Sheikh, the Palestinian Authority’s deputy president, said on Tuesday “the Palestinian leadership called on all civil and security institutions in the State of Palestine” to reject them In a post on X on Tuesday, he said the Israeli steps “contradict international law and the agreements signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization.” A group of eight Arab and Muslim-majority countries expressed their “absolute rejection” of the measures, calling them in a joint statement Monday illegal and warning they would “fuel violence and conflict in the region.” Israel’s pledge not to annex the West Bank is embedded in its diplomatic agreements with some of those countries and renewed warnings that it was a “red line” for the Emirates led Israel to shelve some high-level discussions on the matter last year. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was “gravely concerned” by the measures. “They are driving us further and further away from a two-State solution and from the ability of the Palestinian authority and the Palestinian people to control their own destiny,” his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, said on Monday. What the measures mean The measures, approved by Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet on Sunday, expand Israel’s enforcement authority over land use and planning in areas run by the Palestinian Authority, making it easier for Jewish settlers to force Palestinians to give up land. Smotrich and Katz on Sunday said they would lift long-standing restrictions on land sales to Israeli Jews in the West Bank, shift some control over sensitive holy sites — including Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque, also known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs — and declassify land registry records to ease property acquisitions. They also revive a government committee empowered to make what officials described as “proactive” land purchases in the territory, a step intended to reserve land for future settlement expansion. Taken together, the moves add an official stamp to Israel’s accelerating expansion and would override parts of decades-old agreements that split the West Bank between areas under Israeli control and areas where the Palestinian Authority exercises limited autonomy. Israel has increasingly legalized settler outposts built on land Palestinians say documents show they have long owned, evicted Palestinian communities from areas declared “military zones” and villages near archaeological sites it has reclassified as “national parks.” More than 700,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for an independent state along with the Gaza Strip. Palestinians are not permitted to sell land privately to Israelis. Settlers can buy homes on land controlled by Israel’s government. The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction to be illegal and an obstacle to peace. “These decisions constitute a direct violation of the international agreements to which Israel is committed and are steps toward the annexation of Areas A and B,” anti-settlement watchdog group Peace Now said on Sunday, referring to parts of the West Bank where the Palestinian Authority exercised some autonomy.
