Sadrist Iraqis Opposing Iran Expand Protests To Dissolve Parliament

Conservative hopeful Rishi Sunak said on Saturday that Britain should designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization, warning that the stabbing should be a “wake-up call for the West”.

The conservative politician noted that the response to the stabbing by Iranian politicians and senior figures strengthens the case for proscribing Tehran’s elite military unit. He also suggested that the Vienna talks to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran may have reached “a dead end”.

Hadi Matar, the pro-Iran fanatic that stabbed the author at an event in New York state on Friday, was charged with attempted murder on Saturday. 

A preliminary investigation by police, including of the 24-year-old’s social media accounts, suggested he was sympathetic to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, as his Facebook account featured pictures of Qasem Soleimani, the IRGC general who was killed in a US drone strike in 2020, and Iran’s Supreme Leader. He was in possession of a fake driving license that had the surname of a Hezbollah leader allied to Soleimani. 

Rushdie, who spent years in hiding after Iran urged Muslims to kill him over his novel "The Satanic Verses", was stabbed in the neck and torso on stage at a lecture on Friday. He has been taken off a ventilator and is now able to talk. 

Iran’s Kayhan daily linked to Iran’s Supreme Leader said “a thousand bravos” to the man who attacked Salman Rushdie, implying that his throat should have been cut.

An oil sector wokers' union announced on Saturday that at least two people have died this week in the city of Abadan due to heatstroke and weakness caused by hours of exhausting work in extreme heat.

Two weeks ago another worker died during work in the provincial capital of oil-rich Khuzestan while the government offices and businesses were closed due to high temparatures.

Despite temperatures rising to more than 50 degrees Celsius – about 122 in Fahrenheit scale – in the southern parts of the country, where most of the oil and gas plants are located, subcontractors for the government refuse to stop work even for a few hours.

According to reports, the working conditions in the port city of Asaluyeh in Bushehr province is so bad that at least 100 workers are taken to hospitals for heatstroke daily, as the temperature has reached 53 degrees and the humidity is over 90 percent.

Amid a dire economic situation in Iran at least 10 workers have committed suicide in the last three months due to dismissal from their jobs and "livelihood problems". The latest happened on Saturday in the western city of Ilam.

With food prices rising faster after four years of United States’ ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions, Iranian workers and retirees have been holding regular protests or strikes to demand higher salaries.

In May, widespread protests by workers, shop owners, and teachers against poverty, inflation, and low wages, were met with heavy-handed crackdown and numerous arrests by security forces.

Iran’s government and top officials have not reacted to the attack in New York on Friday. While the hardliner media have welcomed the move implicitly or even openly, praising the assailant. Kayhan daily linked to the Supreme Leader, for instance on Saturday said “a thousand bravos” to the man who attacked Rushdie, implying that his throat should have been cut. In its Sunday edition, the paper said, “divine vengeance befell Salma Rushdie” and predicted that former US President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are next.

Some Iranian media and political figures have adopted a different tact accusing opponents of the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal of using the attack on Salman Rushdie as a means of sabotaging a possible nuclear agreement.

Proponents of the conspiracy theory claim there is a possible involvement of Iran’s opponents, particularly Israel, who want to discredit the Iranian government and sabotage agreement on the revival of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and lifting of US sanctions.

Hardliner Mohammad Marandi who has acted as a spokesman-cum-advisor of the Iranian negotiators in Vienna nuclear talks, tweeted that he would not be shedding tears “for a writer who spouts hatred and contempt for Muslims and Islam” but went on to ask if it “isn’t odd that as we near a potential nuclear deal, the US makes claims about a hit on Bolton... and then this happens?”

“I'm not an exponent of conspiracy theories, but simultaneousness of the news about plans to assassinate [John] Bolton and the attack on Rushdie with the finalization of talks to restore the JCPOA isn’t not credible to me,” reformist' politician and commentator Abbas Abdi who is an ardent critic of the Raisi government, tweeted.

It is quite possible that the recent ‘plots’ against US officials and citizen as well as Rushdie were organized by the Israeli intelligence to prevent diplomatic solutions to the disputes between Tehran and Washington, Reza Nasri, a commentaor said in a tweet while in a commentary Saturday the conservative Alef news website said the West would devise ‘propaganda scenarios’ against Iran revolving around the attack on Rushdie.

Others on social media have seen these statements as an attempt by Iran to create confusion to deflect blame for a death fatwa issued 34 years ago against Rushdie that could have led to the Friday knife attack.

The 15 Khordad Foundation, a charity organization that put the multi-million-dollar bounty on Rushdie’s head in 1989 and even increased it by half a million to $3.3 million in 2012, has so far remained silent about the assassination attempt.

Hadi Matar (24), the suspect in the stabbing of Rushdie at an event in New York state, has now been charged with attempted murder and is being held without bond, prosecutors in Chautauqua County said on Saturday.

A preliminary law enforcement review of Matar's social media accounts showed he was sympathetic to Shi'ite extremism and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), although no definitive links had been found, according to NBC New York.

In the US, Republicans have demanded that the Biden administration must put an end to negotiations with Iran in view of the terrorist act against Rushdie sanctioned by Khomeini's fatwa as well as the alleged recent Iranian plots against US officials and citizens including John Bolton, Mark Pompeo, and Masih Alinejad, an Iranian American activist.

Marilyne Guèvremont, a spokesperson from Global Affairs Canada, said the families, and the victims, are at the heart of the International Coordination and Response Group’s efforts in the pursuit of truth, justice, and accountability, noting that the body has determined further attempts to negotiate with the Islamic Republic authorities are in vain.

The coordination group represents states whose citizens were among 176 passengers killed when Iran’s Revolutionary Guard fired two missiles at the place as it was taking off from Tehran on January 8, 2020.

Describing it as a reprehensible tragedy, she said, “We are now focused on the subsequent actions to resolve this matter in accordance with international law. We will not rest until the families get the justice, transparency and accountability from Iran that they deserve.”

According to a document obtained by Iran International, the Swiss embassy in Tehran, which represents US interests, has officially informed Tehran about a lawsuit filed against the Islamic Republic and IRGC by families of victims of the Ukrainian plane. 

In June, Canada also announced that it has notified Iran of Ontario's Superior Court of Justice’s ruling that IRGC’s downing of Ukraine Airlines Flight PS752 was intentional.

Earlier in August, the father of one of the victims embarked on a symbolic 400-kilometer march after a press conference at his son's grave in Richmond Hill, Ontario, and will go to Ottawa to personally deliver his protest letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Rushdie, who spent years in hiding after Iran urged Muslims to kill him over his novel "The Satanic Verses", was stabbed in the neck and torso on stage at a lecture on Friday.

Police have identified the suspect in custody as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old man from Fairview.

A preliminary law enforcement review of Matar's social media accounts showed he was sympathetic to Shi'ite extremism and IRGC causes, NBC New York reported.

Matar was born in California and recently moved to New Jersey, the NBC New York report said, adding that he had a fake drivers license on him.

NBC New York said the official told it that there were no definitive links established to the IRGC, but the initial assessment indicated the suspect was sympathetic to the Iranian government group.

There has been no official government reaction in Iran to the attack on Rushdie, but several hardline Iranian newspapers expressed praise for his assailant.

Ali Tehfe, mayor of Yaroun in the south of Lebanon, said that the suspect was the son of a man from the town. The suspect's parents emigrated to the United States, and he was born and raised there, the mayor added, but said he had "no information at all" on their political views.

An official from Hezbollah told Reuters that the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group had no additional information on the attack on Rushdie.

Reporting by Reuters