Sir Salman Rushdie warns US has become a 'very violent country' following attack on him

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Speaking exclusively to LBC's Matt Frei, Sir Salman said President Trump "was led down the garden path by Mr Netanyahu” entering the war in Iran and shared he fears there "will be attempts to interfere” with the upcoming US midterm elections.

Sir Salman, 79, was stabbed fifteen times by an extremist during an event in New York in 2022, after his 1988 book The Satanic Verses was perceived by the then Iranian Supreme Leader to be blasphemous.

His attacker, Hadi Matar, 28, was convicted of attempted murder last year and sentenced to 25 years in prison and was later also convicted of terrorism charges.

The attack - which left Sir Salman blind in his right eye - is the subject of an upcoming film called Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie.

Read more: Novelist Sir Salman Rushdie tells jury in terrorism trial that 'knife was a millimetre from brain' during attack on stage

Read more: 'We'll never forget', says Trump, 25 years on from 9/11 attacks, and 'that's why we fight today'

Commenting on his view on the US following the attack on him in 2022, Sir Salman said: "The United States has become a very violent country.

"That's to say that there is great violence on an almost daily basis: children being shot in schools, mass murders in shopping malls, and violent language to go with it.

"But the fact is that actual violence, violent death is an everyday event, and I can only hypothesise that if a young man grows up in that world, the ability to pick up a weapon, it becomes easier in a world where everybody's picking up weapons."

Asked whether he believed that President Trump understood the complexities of the Iranian regime before going to war, Sir Salman replied: "I think he doesn't understand much to tell you the truth, and I think he was led down the garden path by Mr Netanyahu in this case.

"I think this is Netanyahu's war. He's wanted it for a long time, and he finally found an American President foolish enough to do what he said.."

The novelist also spoke to Matt about his views on the motivation of his attacker.

"I think we live in an age where there's an enormous amount of uncertainty in the world. The world is changing at very high speed," he said.

"Somehow, these new technologies we've invented, these communications technologies, which should bring us together, actually have greatly increased loneliness and isolation.

He added that "young, impressionable, malleable people in that situation can be led down a dangerous path.

"And I was really trying to understand how somebody who's never committed a crime is willing to commit murder and to murder somebody he knows nothing about.

"By his own admission, he'd read two pages, he said, of my work... and he didn't seem curious to find out more... He'd been told something, and he accepted it, which is that I was a bad person."

He continued to say that "one of the things about extremist religious ideology is that it sells young men like this on the idea that the real life is after this life.

"Once people begin to think like that, they value our life less because it's not the one they're looking for....I'm just trying to think myself into what might make somebody willing to do such a thing."

He also said that despite the active fatwa - a legal decree issued under Islamic law - on his life, he had "no protection officers" before 2022 after the government "called the dogs off" after assessing that the threat level against him had reduced.

"When Labour came in, Robin Cook as Foreign Secretary met with the Iranian foreign minister in a side meeting during the United Nations General Assembly.

"They basically called the dogs off, which was confirmed to me a little while later by British intelligence that the threat level had dramatically dropped."

Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie - will be out 2nd October, with previous events across 75 cinemas on 30 September.

Salman Rushdie's full interview with Matt Frei will be available on Saturday.