Biden under pressure to suspend Iran talks after Rushdie attack, weak condemnation

The assassination attempt on Friday against Salman Rushdie, who has long been targeted by the Iranian regime over a book he authored that offers a critical view of Islam, has led to increased pressure on the Biden administration to suspend its indirect talks with Tehran over a new nuclear deal.

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"Iran has offered a bounty to anyone who assassinates Salman Rushdie," Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted on Friday. "Today he was stabbed in America. Why is Biden still negotiating a 'deal' with these terrorists in Tehran?"

Rushdie, 75, was set to deliver a lecture on artistic freedom at Chautauqua Institution in western New York when police say 24-year-old Hadi Matar rushed the stage and stabbed the Indian-born writer, who has lived with a bounty on his head since his 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses" prompted Iran to urge Muslims to kill him.

Following hours of surgery, Rushdie was on a ventilator and unable to speak as of Friday evening, according to his agent, Andrew Wylie, but a day later he had regained the ability to breathe on his own. The novelist was likely to lose an eye and had nerve damage in his arm and wounds to his liver, Wylie said in an email.

The attack comes more than 30 years after Iran's late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for his death in response to Rushdie's book, "causing Rushdie to require round-the-clock security at various points in his life.

According to Fox News, Rubio was joined by several other lawmakers and prominent figures on the Right who pressed President Joe Biden to end his effort to restore the 2015 nuclear deal, pointing a finger at Iran for the attempted murder.

"Iran's leaders have been calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie for decades," Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted. "We know they're trying to assassinate American officials today. Biden needs to immediately end negotiations with this terrorist regime."

"This White House statement on Salman Rushdie is appalling," author Gary Weiss described the White House's reaction to the attack. "No mention is made of Iran putting a price on his head. Or that the fatwa was reaffirmed by the ayatollah in 2005 and in 2019. Is Joe Biden is THAT anxious to move ahead with the lousy JCPOA?"

In his statement condemning the attack, Biden said "Salman Rushdie – with his insight into humanity, with his unmatched sense for story, with his refusal to be intimidated or silenced – stands for essential, universal ideals," but did not mention Iran or the fatwa against him.

"The silence of @POTUS in response to the attempted murder of Salman Rushdie looks increasingly the result of one thing: A desperation to return to the Iran deal," Foundation for Defense of Democracies CEO Mark Dubowitz tweeted. "American desperation increases regime aggression. It always has."

Fox News said that "a White House spokesperson told Fox News Digital that President Biden has been clear he will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon and that the best way to ensure that happens is through diplomacy." Although Iran's current Supreme Leader Ali Khameneihas ostensibly tried to play down the decree from the 1980s, the state-controlled media had jubilant reporting in the wake of the attack, including on the paper that is considered a mouthpiece of the chief ayatollah, calling him an "apostate" over his "blasphemous" writings.