A newspaper under the control of Iran’s Supreme Leader has said that Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo could soon be “next” for “divine revenge” while celebrating the attack on “apostate” author Salman Rushdie.
President Donald Trump and former Secretary of State and CIA director Mike Pompeo should feel “threatened” as a result of the attack on “apostate” author Salman Rushdie, a newspaper under the control of Iran’s Supreme Leader has claimed, with the paper threatening that the two former U.S. officials could be “next” for “divine revenge”.
Having sustained serious injuries on Friday after being stabbed multiple times at an event in New York, British-American author Salman Rushdie had been marked for death by the Iranian regime for decades, with the country’s then supreme theocratic leader Ayatollah Khomeini calling for “Muslims of the world rapidly to execute the author and the publishers of the book” so that “no one will any longer dare to offend the sacred values of Islam.”
Media in Iran have since celebrated the attack on the award-winning author, with the newspaper Kayhan — which is under the control of the officer of Iran’s current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — warning both Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo that they may well be next over their role in orchestrating the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Qassem Soleimani.
“The attack on Salman Rushdie showed that taking revenge on the perpetrators of crimes and criminals on American soil is not a difficult task, and after this, Trump and Pompeo will feel more threatened,” an editorial published in the paper on Sunday read, which claimed that Rushdie suffered the “divine revenge” that both of the American officials may too suffer.
“Since the Iranian authorities have repeatedly warned that the main perpetrators of the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of the Quds Force, will pay for their crime and must be brought to justice, in the last three years, Trump and other perpetrators of this assassination have been in fear of they are taking revenge on Iran and they don’t even dare to travel outside America,” the paper suggested.
“Therefore, the attack on Salman Rushdie was a warning to the perpetrators of Sardar Soleimani’s assassination that even if they are under the extensive protection of the security forces, how close revenge is to them,” it concluded.
The editorial also justified the attack on Rushdie — as well as former Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini’s call for the man to be murdered — as being totally justified, describing the India-born author as being a “natural apostate” from Islam.
“An apostate (whether natural or national) is someone who turns away from his Islamic beliefs and turns his back on those principles,” the editorial reads. “A person who turns away from the religion of Islam and insults its sanctities is called a natural apostate, that is, someone like Salman Rushdie who, regardless of rejecting the religion of Islam, sought to insult it.”
“A natural apostate is condemned to death and death in [Islamic] jurisprudence, and all jurists are almost unanimous in this matter,” the publication went on to assert, while warning that “anyone who agrees to play the role of infantry in the Wild West must face the cost”.
Translators and publishers of The Satanic Verses have previously been killed or seriously injured in attempts on their life, with Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi being stabbed to death at the Tokyo university where he worked as an assistant professor in 1991 just days after Italian translator Ettore Capriolo survived being stabbed multiple times at his home in Milan.
The book’s Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, was shot three times in the back in Oslo two years later, with a former Iranian diplomat and two Lebanese men finally being charged for the attempted murder in 2018.
The threat against President Donald Trump and former CIA director Mike Pompeo comes merely days after an Iranian national was charged for allegedly planning the assassination of former National Security Advisor John Bolton.
Shahram Poursafi, who is alleged by American security officials to be a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is alleged to have attempted to pay individuals up to $300,000 to kill Bolton, though Iranian officials have dismissed the claim.
Meanwhile, Bolton has described himself as being “embarrassed” at the idea that Iran was only offering $300,000 for his life, with the former ambassador to the United Nations saying that he thought he would have had a higher bounty on his head.
“I was embarrassed at the low price,” Bolton told CNN. “I would have thought that I would have been higher, but, you know, I guess maybe it was an exchange rate problem or something.”