World renowned writer, speaker and luminary Salman Rushdie was stabbed in New York City on Friday just as he was about to take the stage and give a lecture.

The author of a number of books, Rushdie has been living under an order of execution with a million dollar bounty on his head for one book in particular, The Satanic Verses, practically since it was published in 1988.

For The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie was placed under a religious fatwa by the Ayatollah in control of Iran, with an enormous bounty on his head. The fatwa included not only Rushdie, but everyone involved in the publication of the book. Three of those people have been attacked, one fatally, in connection with the decree in the years since.

At one point, Rushdie himself went into hiding for over 10 years.

While it’s too early to blame the Rushdie attack on the execution order issued by Iran’s leaders, it’s never too early to confront the growing threat posed by the Ayatollahs of Iran.

Beyond the goal of a nuclear Iran, beyond sponsoring regional terror operations against its nearest neighbors and fellow co-religionists, the Iranian regime recently showed itself perfectly capable of sending an assassin who got within a stone’s throw of former National Security Advisor John Bolton on U.S. soil.

Any attempt so successful is bound to be followed by another, and another. This ominous sign of a reinvigorated Iranian regime, emboldened and able enough to strike with impunity so far outside its own region, even within the heart of one of its most powerful enemies, is frightening.

It suggests that if in one year, two, five, or ten, the Ayatollahs produce a nuclear weapon, they will likely use it.

It probably won’t be launched from Tehran either. One of the Iranian regime’s most potent and powerful weapons in its ongoing war against Israel, neighboring Muslim nations, the United States and its own people, is a willingness to use proxy terror groups to do the actual dirty work of regional, and possibly worldwide, state-sponsored terrorism.

Acting through these groups- providing funding, weapons, material support, intelligence, military training- Iran’s iron-fisted rulers are able to keep the thinnest possible veneer of respectability on the world stage.

They don’t deserve it.

It’s a farce and it might be time to dispense with it. The Iranian government is sponsoring terrorist campaigns in the Middle East and everyone knows it, none better than Iran’s nearest neighbors, including regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia. It isn’t a secret.

Iran’s proxy terror campaigns and the prospect of the Ayatollahs with The Bomb has terrified a growing number of Middle Eastern countries into normalizing relations with Israel, something they have been stubbornly refusing to do since the moment the modern state of Israel was formally founded.

The Abraham Accords, that hopeful sign of a spring thaw after a long winter of diplomatic isolation for Israel, turned a year old recently. Not only is it likely other nations will join the accord for reasons of national security, trade and support, especially as Iran ramps up terror campaigns and attacks, the Abraham Accords already has one major signer as yet to be formally acknowledged.

Without the tacit approval of Saudi Arabia- the Abraham Accords would never have taken place. Smaller nations like Bahrain and the UAE would never cross their biggest regional ally and key trading partner.

A united Middle Eastern front- with all nations, including Israel, aligned against Iran’s Ayatollahs might serve to curtail some of that regime’s most brutal and deadly schemes of terror, war, assassination and mass murder.

If the attack on Salman Rushdie was engineered by members of the Iranian government, as it has long promised and tried many times to do, it will be another sure sign the regime is ramping up ambitions which might include anything from a nuclear terror attack to threats against the sovereignty of its nearest neighbors.

It is to be hoped that Salman Rushdie will survive this attack, heal from his injuries and continue his career, ultimately as undaunted by this use of force as he has been by the threat of force.

The crimes of Iran’s current rulers include, among other things, mass murder, execution, widespread persecution of the Iranian people and brutal repression of marginalized groups.

Salman Rushdie wrote a few books.

God willing, he will live to write many more.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)