Time to Confront, Not Coddle, the Iranian Regime

On August 12, 2022, the famous Indian-born novelist Sir Salman Rushdie was attacked and stabbed repeatedly while lecturing at the Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York. A strong 75-year-old, he appears likely to recover, but as of this writing, is reported to have suffered liver damage and nerve damage to his arm, and to be likely to lose an eye as a consequence of the attack. The assault represents the culmination of over three decades of fear for the author, who since 1989 has been living under the threat of a bounty for his death, currently set at $3 million, offered by the government of Iran. Now that Iran’s gangster policies have borne bloody fruit, the United States must respond in defense of free speech. Above all, the Biden Administration must cease efforts to rehabilitate the Iranian regime as a respectable player in the region with an ill-considered nuclear deal and must instead apply consistent pressure to defeat Iran’s terrorist policies.

After decades of pursuit, the agents of Iranian transnational oppression have demonstrated how difficult it is for a private citizen to escape targeting by a state actor, even in the United States—perhaps especially here, given the low level of public security and easy availability of advanced weapons. This threat must be taken seriously, given that Iran has shown a repeated pattern of targeting American citizens and residents. According to court documents, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the terrorist-liaison branch of Iran’s armed forces, itself a designated terrorist organization, attempted to assassinate former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton in 2021. Also in 2021, the FBI narrowly thwarted a plot to kidnap Iranian American journalist and regime critic Masih Alinejad in Brooklyn and smuggle her to a Middle Eastern country.

The bounty for Rushdie’s death was issued under the rubric of a fatwa, a religious edict, issued by the late Ayatollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of Iran, over accusations of blasphemy against Islam by a character in one of Rushdie’s novels (“The Satanic Verses”), which Khomeini reportedly never even read. Rushdie spent thirteen years hiding under a pseudonym to avoid assassins but emerged to live a public life in 2001. As recently as 2017, Iran’s current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, confirmed that the fatwa remains in effect. In 2019, Twitter temporarily banned Khamenei over a direct threat to Rushdie’s life; however, the account has been fully restored and remains active.

Rushdie reportedly had three close calls before with Iranian-inspired assassins, including a 1989 incident where a man tried to kill Rushdie at a London hotel with a bomb filled with explosives, which detonated early and killed the terrorist instead. In 1991, Hitoshi Igarashi, who translated “The Satanic Verses” into Japanese, was stabbed to death in Tokyo in a crime that remains unsolved. In 1993, Turkish novelist Aziz Nesin, who had published a translated excerpt of the novel, narrowly escaped a hotel set on fire by Iran-inspired terrorists targeting him, but 37 others died in the inferno. Also in 1993, the novel’s Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, was shot three times outside his home in Oslo. Iran has denied responsibility but justified the most recent attack on Rushdie, which it claims he brought on himself by insulting Islam (although Rushdie is a Muslim himself).

How has the United States responded to this catastrophe so far? Not with air strikes, as might have been expected, but instead with attempts to rehabilitate the Iranian regime under the framework of a European-brokered nuclear deal. Talks broke down earlier this year over the Iranian regime’s insistence that the U.S. delist the IRGC as a terrorist organization. The IRGC, among other things, is the very entity attempting to chill speech in the West in the most brutal way possible: via assassinations and kidnappings. It is profoundly hoped that the U.S. and its allies will not be so irresponsible as to empower these thugs and the regime that backs them— the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism.

Until the United States gets serious about this threat, free speech is in serious jeopardy. We need to call out violent Islamic extremism as quickly as we do violent white supremacism.

Speaking frankly, until the United States gets serious about this threat, free speech is in serious jeopardy. We need to call out violent Islamic extremism as quickly as we do violent white supremacism. Any person, government, or organization calling for harm of a people or person due to a disagreement in speech or belief should be held to the same standard. Shockingly, the Members of Congress most notably opposed to Iran’s mortal enemy, the democratic State of Israel—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar—have made no public mention of this violent attack on American soil and American freedoms.

Today, free speech in America is in a perilous state. Any speech that offends Iran, or similarly minded regimes such as Russia and China, can now be foreseen to endanger the lives of speakers residing in the United States. The question isn’t how Rushdie’s safety was compromised; it is whether anyone in the country without round-the-clock security protection is safe from the agents of hostile foreign powers. At the moment, not only are we not protected, but also the U.S. is on the cusp of further emboldening hostile regimes by rewarding Iran with diplomatic concessions, rather than military repercussions, the very week of the attack on Rushdie. The only thing that will chill the intimidators would be a final end to the Iranian nuclear negotiations—and an appropriate security response.

Dr. Sheila Nazarian is a Los Angeles physician and star of the Emmy-nominated Netflix series Skin Decision: Before and After whose family escaped to America from Iran.