Iran’s hardliners threaten to kill Donald Trump after Salman Rushdie attack

Iran’s hardliners have threatened to kill former US president Donald Trump and his secretary of state Mike Pompeo following the stabbing of Sir Salman Rushdie – allegedly by Hadi Matar, a Muslim who has been praised by the religious regime in Tehran.

The Kayhan newspaper, whose editor is personally selected by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has suggested that after Rushdie, “it is now the turn of Trump and Pompeo”.

“God has taken his revenge on Rushdie. The attack on him shows it is not a difficult job to take similar revenge on Trump and Pompeo and from now on they will feel more in danger for their lives,” reads the paper’s front-page editorial today.

Iran’s attempts to assassinate former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “are real and ongoing” his successor Anthony Blinken, told US Congress in April.

Although the motive for the attack on Rushdie is not clear yet, Iranian opposition forces in exile have no doubt that the knifeman was influenced by the death sentence that ayatollah Ruhullah Khomeini put on Rushdie for his book Satanic Verses.

“These fatwas for killing people with whose ideas you do not agree are nothing new in the history of Islam in Iran,” Dr Abbas Milani of Stanford University has told London-based Iran International TV.

The current Iranian leadership has never rescinded the fatwa, arguing that “it is still valid as an edict of a grand ayatollah”.

The headline of the front page story on the Kayhan newspaper reads: “God has taken his revenge on Rushdie. Next is the turn of Trump and Pompeo.”