Attack on Salman Rushdie Puts Biden on the Spot

Will any Iranian crime move President Biden and the rest of Washington to take action against the Islamic Republic’s threat to America?What motivated 24-year-old Hadi Matar to allegedly stab Salman Rushdie yesterday is, as of this writing, unclear; we also don’t know where he comes from or what made him rush the stage at the Chautauqua Institution, where the author of the “Satanic Verses” was about to give a lecture. We do know, though, that in 1978 the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa — a religious edict — calling for Mr. Rushdie’s murder, and that a bounty of several million dollars was offered to execute the fatwa. Apologists note that powerful Iranians, such as one former president, Hassan Rouhani, somewhat softened the threat. Yet the current president, Ebrahim Raisi, is more of a hardliner than these predecessors, and at any rate Tehran functionaries have no say on fatwas — even if their title is president.The only decider is Supreme Leader Khamenei, who in 2019 took to Twitter to say this: “Imam Khomeini’s verdict regarding Salman Rushdie is based on divine verses and just like divine verses, it is solid and irrevocable.”Now the unfree press in Iran is praising Mr. Matar. “A thousand bravos” to “the brave and dutiful person who attacked the apostate and evil Salman Rushdie in New York,” the hardline Kayhan newspaper editorialized yesterday. “The hand of the man who tore the neck of God’s enemy must be kissed.”Maybe after the attack against Mr. Rushdie, Twitter will rethink its bizarre policies that claim some users must be banned for inciting violence while others can spew hatred and issue threats. Twitter, though, is a private company, so it can author its own erroneous policies.Not so our government, for which Americans pay taxes to defend us from enemies wishing us harm — as in Iran’s ever growing threats of terrorism. In the latest such case, a former defense secretary, Mark Esper, told CBS News this week that he has had government-provided “protection 24/7” since leaving office, due to Iranian threats.Earlier this week the justice Department unsealed an indictment against an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps official, Shahram Poursafi, for plotting to kill a former national security adviser, John Bolton.Other former officials, including Secretary of State Pompeo and a former state department point man on Iran, Brian Hook, also require constant extra protection after IRGC threats to kill them were exposed. “You can kill us but you cannot kill the idea of writing & fighting for our dignity,” an Iranian-American journalist and activist, Masih Alinejad, tweeted this morning.Last summer the FBI foiled a plot to kidnap Ms. Alinejad to Venezuela and from there to Iran. Currently she is hiding at an FBI safe house after an armed assassin who was dispatched by Tehran to kill her was arrested near her house in Brooklyn earlier this month. “I condemn the barbaric attack on Salman Rushdie,” Ms. Alinejad tweeted. “After surviving a kidnapping and an assassination plot in New York, I won’t feel safe on US soil until the US take strong action against terror.”So far Washington’s only actions have been defensive: beefing up security and letting threatened Americans roam from one safe house to another, as in Ms. Alinejad’s case. “The world’s leading state sponsor of terror attempted to assassinate American officials inside our country,” a former American ambassdor at the United Nations, Nikki Haley, told Fox News this week. “Under no circumstances should the Biden administration allow Raisi to set foot in our country.”She was referring to the Iranian president’s plan to address the United Nations General Assembly next month at New York. The Biden administration apparently plans to grant Mr. Raisi a visa, citing a 1947 agreement that America signed with the UN when the world body pitched its tent at the city.America “is generally obligated under the UN headquarters agreement to facilitate travel” to “representatives of UN member states,” a state department spokesman, Vedant Patel, told reporters this week “We take our obligations under these agreements very seriously.” Never mind that Congress authorized the president to ignore the headquarters agreement if such representatives pose danger to America. Presidents — including Ronald Reagan — have used that clause, as with Yasser Arafat, to ban entry to men who were invited to address the UN. Instead of denying entry to Iranians who preside over plots to kill Americans, Washington insists that re-signing a nuclear deal that would shower the Islamic Republic with cash is in America’s best interest. After the plot against him was unsealed this week, Mr. Bolton said that returning to that 2015 nuclear deal would be a “self-inflicted wound.”The latest attack on American soil must convince Washington to instead inflict some wounds on the Tehran regime. Denying a visa to Mr. Raisi would be a good start, but much more is needed.

Attack on Salman Rushdie Puts Biden on the Spot

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