Iran's executioners

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

70% : When the assassins returned to Tehran, they received a hero's welcome.
64% : In response, London showered Iran with goodwill.
62% : With a nod to Iran during his inauguration, Bush declared, "Goodwill begets goodwill.
49% : The assassin, a Muslim convert named David Belfield, fled to Iran, where he continues to live today.
48% : The Iran-Iraq War was over, and while much of the world saw a chance to reengage Tehran, Khomeini saw an opportunity to export his revolution not only politically but also intellectually beyond the Middle East.
45% : "To sever diplomatic relations with Iran over this altercation is an overreaction. ...
42% : After Khomeini's fatwa, the British government suspended relations and declared they would not return an ambassador to Tehran until the Iranian government promised not to harm Rushdie.
42% : President George H.W. Bush entered office optimistic about Iran.
40% : Instead of accepting Bush's olive branch, Iran responded by accelerating its assassination campaign from Cyprus to Pakistan.
40% : While German Chancellor Helmut Kohl sought to curry favor with Tehran, he could not quash Germany's judiciary, which tried the hit men captured fleeing the shooting.
39% : The day after the U.K. and Iran exchanged ambassadors, Iranian security services reaffirmed the death sentence, and Iranian state media labeled Rushdie an apostate subject to death.
38% : While German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel had once promised a "critical dialogue" to address human rights concerns, even the murder of dissidents on German soil was not enough to force Berlin to take a tougher line on Tehran.
37% : While revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini encouraged the fiction that Iranian terrorism and its rejection of diplomatic norms were just the actions of mobs motivated by righteous anger against America, the evidence of the Iranian Embassy and Khomeini's asylum for the murderer was too much even for Carter to ignore.
36% : While it is true that Khatami himself likely bore no responsibility, his impotence in the face of Iranian assassinations should have surprised no one: Elected officials in Iran neither control nor influence security or military policy.
34% : This, too, would become a pattern, and cynical Western greed would soon factor into Iranian decision-making as Iranian authorities concluded that penalties were transitory and Tehran quite literally could get away with murder.
34% : Many of these murders occurred after Iranian President Mohammad Khatami offered a "dialogue of civilizations" and while the Western officials, including former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, spoke about the promise of reform in Iran.
33% : In reality, the net result of Biden's policy is to convince Iran that Iranian assassins can declare open season upon Iranians and Americans in a way that not even Carter would tolerate.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.