Iran claims 'no role' in Salman Rushdie attack, says 'don't accuse us'

In Iran's first reaction to the attack on author Salman Rushdie, its government official denied on Monday that Tehran was involved in the assault on the notable author.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said nobody has the right to accuse Iran of the incident.

Kanaani said that Iran did not "have any other information more than what the American media has reported.” The West “condemning the actions of the attacker and in return glorifying the actions of the insulter to Islamic beliefs is a contradictory attitude,” he added.

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.

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His assailant, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, allegedly sympathetic to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces, has pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from the attack through his lawyer.

Former Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa on Rushdie in 1989 demanding his death. The Islamic edict came amid a violent uproar in the Muslim world over Rushdie's novel 'The Satanic Verses' which some viewed as blasphemous.

A semiofficial Iranian foundation had put up a bounty of over $3 million for the author, though it has yet to offer any comment on the attack.

While fatwas can be revised or revoked, Iran's current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who took over after Khomeini has never done so. As recently as February 2017, Khamenei said: “The decree is as Imam Khomeini issued.”