Word: khomeini
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...days later, one of Khomeini's colleagues, President Ali Khamenei, declares that the death sentence might be rescinded if only Rushdie would repent. Rushdie duly issues a formal apology, saying he meant no insult to true believers. Will Khomeini forgive him? Will the death sentence be lifted...
...stuff than that. The very next day the Iranian revolutionary leader, 88, issued a statement rejecting Rushdie's apology and declaring flatly, "It is incumbent on every Muslim to do everything possible to send him to hell." Three days later, in a speech to a group of Iranian clerics, Khomeini added that nothing, not even Western economic sanctions, would "force us to retreat and forgo implementation of God's decree...
...Khomeini repeated his threat again and again, Western governments at last began to take action. Led by Britain and strongly supported by West Germany, the twelve members of the European Community voted to withdraw their top-ranking diplomats from Tehran in protest. So did Canada, Sweden and Norway. Iran swiftly retaliated by pulling most of its own ambassadors out of Western Europe...
Some Americans found the Bush Administration surprisingly slow and reserved in its response. But at midweek the President finally stepped up to the White House lectern and criticized Khomeini's death sentence as "deeply offensive to the norms of civilized behavior." Bush warned that Washington would hold Iran accountable for "any actions against U.S interests." While it was the strongest statement thus far from anyone in the Government, there was little more that the Administration could do. The U.S. had no diplomatic pawns to move, nor had it ever ended the trade embargo imposed on Iran in 1979. In fact...
...most significant aspect of the Ayatullah's "send him to hell" speech was his emphasis on the rifts within his own government and his fears about the influence of those he called "misled liberals." Said Khomeini: "We should not, for the sake of pleasing several sellout liberals, act in a way that gives the impression that the Islamic Republic of Iran is deviating from its principled positions." Suddenly Rushdie's purported blasphemy seemed minor compared with the sins of Iranian officials who had dared support a renewal of ties with the decadent West...