"Wake-Up Call": UK PM Hopeful Rishi Sunak On Attack On Salman Rushdie

Rishi Sunak, one of two candidates seeking to become Britain's next prime minister, said Friday's attack on author Salman Rushdie should serve as a wake-up call to the West over Iran, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

Indian-born author Rushdie, who spent years in hiding after Iran urged Muslims to kill him over his novel "The Satanic Verses", was stabbed in the neck and torso on stage at a lecture in New York state. After hours of surgery, Rushdie was on a ventilator and unable to speak as of Friday evening.

There has been no official government reaction in Iran to the attack on Rushdie, but several hardline Iranian newspapers praised his assailant.

"The brutal stabbing of Salman Rushdie should be a wake-up call for the West, and Iran's reaction to the attack strengthens the case for proscribing the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps),” Rishi Sunak, the former finance minister, said, according to the paper.

The IRGC controls Iran's elite armed and intelligence forces.

Rishi Sunak, referring to stuttering talks between Iran and the West to revive a nuclear deal, said, "We urgently need a new, strengthened deal and much tougher sanctions, and if we can't get results then we have to start asking whether the JCPOA is at a dead end."

The JCPOA, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is the 2015 agreement under which Iran curbed its nuclear programme in return for relief from U.S., EU and UN sanctions.

“The situation in Iran is extremely serious and in standing up to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin we can't take our eye off the ball elsewhere," Rishi Sunak said.

Polls show Rishi Sunak is badly trailing foreign secretary Liz Truss in the British leadership contest.