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The U.S. has sanctioned an Iranian entity responsible for issuing a bounty on Salman Rushdie in response to the attack on the author in August.
Both the State Department and the Department of the Treasury issued statements announcing the designation of 15 Khordad Foundation as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist”.
In a statement on Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that 15 Khordad Foundation had “issued and subsequently increased” a bounty on Rushdie’s life in support of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s fatwa calling for the author’s death.
A fatwa calling for his death was issued against Rushdie in 1989, following the publication of his novel “The Satanic Verses,” by the then-Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini, which led to attacks on both Rushdie and those associated with him.
The State Department said that the fatwa was “reaffirmed by Iran’s current Supreme Leader in 2017 and was republished by Iranian state-controlled media as recently as August 2022.
