In 2017, however, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reaffirmed that the edict remained in effect, saying, "The decree is as Imam Khomeini issued.

[18] On August 12, 2022 at around 10:47 a.m. EDT,[2] an attacker rushed the stage of Chautauqua Institution, where Rushdie was about to give a talk about the United States as a safe haven for exiled writers.

[23] A New York state trooper and a sheriff's deputy who were present at the event arrested the assailant Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old man from Fairview, New Jersey, directly.

Wylie said that Rushdie faced the prospect of losing one of his eyes, in addition to the possibility of liver damage and multiple severed nerves in one arm.

Attorney General Merrick Garland stated that Matar's attempt to kill Rushdie was "an act of terrorism in the name of Hezbollah", a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).

The indictment alleged that Matar was trying to carry out the Iranian fatwa calling for the death of Rushdie, and that he was influenced by a 2006 speech which endorsed it, given by Hezbollah's secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah.

[43] He was born in California to parents who emigrated from Yaroun, a mixed Shia-Christian village in the south of Lebanon where support for Hezbollah and the Iranian government is common.

[31] Matar's father returned to his cinder-block home in Yaroun several years before the attack, and his mother and her three children had recently moved from California to New Jersey.

[49][50] A source in law enforcement told local news that Matar's social media accounts indicated support for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and for Shia extremism.

He pointed out that "Iranian state institutions have incited violence against Rushdie for generations, and state-affiliated media recently gloated about the attempt on his life.

[65] On September 14, the Wall Street Journal reported that the "Biden administration is considering sanctions targeting entities linked to Iran for encouraging attacks on Salman Rushdie."

[67] Iranian-American political analyst Mohammad Marandi, a member of Iran's nuclear negotiations team, wrote: "I won't be shedding tears for a writer who spouts endless hatred & contempt for Muslims & Islam.

"[69] Marandi's statement referenced the United States Department of Justice's allegation that Iran had planned to assassinate US national security advisor John Bolton in 2020.

[71][59] Within Iran, conservative newspapers generally welcomed the attack, as well as the state broadcaster (who referred to Rushdie as an apostate), while reformist publications such as Etemad condemned it.

[58][78][79][80][81][82] Among Indian politicians who condemned the attack were Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan, Shashi Tharoor and Karti Chidambaram of the Indian National Congress, Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) leader Kavita Krishnan and Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi.

[89] The CEO of PEN America commented, "We cannot immediately think of any comparable incident of a public violent attack on a writer during a literary event here in the United States.

[90] Nobel laureates Kazuo Ishiguro and Abdulrazak Gurnah were among the first to issue statements defending Rushdie, while his fellow Booker Prize winners Ian McEwan and Arundhati Roy also condemned the stabbing.

[91] Shortly afterwards, other Booker Prize winners, such as Graham Swift, Margaret Atwood and Ben Okri, would also publish their responses to Rushdie's stabbing.

[95][96] On the day of the attack, Islamic studies expert Kylie Moore-Gilbert wrote: "More than 30 years and a $3 million bounty later, Khomeini's poisonous fatwa has finally caught up with Salman Rushdie.

"[105] The assault on Rushdie resulted in renewed interest in obtaining copies of The Satanic Verses, with the novel ranked number thirteen on Amazon.com by the afternoon after he was stabbed.

[111] Following the attack, the Chautauqua Institution announced that it would require guests to furnish photo IDs to buy gate passes, which previously could be purchased anonymously.