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The New Jersey man who allegedly stabbed Salman Rushdie in Western New York last week praised Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini in an exclusive jailhouse interview with The Post on Wednesday — and admitted he didn’t think the author would survive the attack.

“When I heard he survived, I was surprised, I guess,” Hadi Matar, of Fairview, NJ, said in a video interview from the Chautauqua County Jail.

The 24-year-old was mum on whether he was inspired by the late Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death in 1989 over the author’s book “The Satanic Verses,” citing a warning by his defense attorney.

“I respect the ayatollah. I think he’s a great person. That’s as far as I will say about that,” Matar said, noting he only “read like two pages” of Rushdie’s controversial novel.

“I read a couple pages. I didn’t read the whole thing cover to cover,” he said.

The accused stabber denied being in contact with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and alluded to acting completely alone.

He said he was inspired to go to Chautauqua after seeing a tweet sometime in the winter announcing Rushdie’s visit.

“I don’t like the person. I don’t think he’s a very good person,” he said about Rushdie. “I don’t like him. I don’t like him very much.

“He’s someone who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, the belief systems.”

The 75-year-old India-born writer, who has faced death threats for decades over the novel which some Muslims believed insulted the Prophet Muhammad, was attacked on stage Friday as he was preparing to deliver a lecture on artistic freedom at the Chautauqua Institution.

Rushdie — who previously spent years in hiding because of the $3 million Iranian bounty on his head — was stabbed at least 10 times, suffering a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and an eye, according to his literary agent Andrew Wylie. He’s since been taken off a ventilator and is said to be “on the road to recovery.”

A New York state trooper assigned to Friday’s event took Matar into custody almost immediately after the attack. Matar was charged with attempted murder and assault and pleaded not guilty through his attorney at a court hearing Saturday.

During the approximately 15-minute-long interview Wednesday, Matar wore a black and white prison jumpsuit and a white cloth mask. He looked down at times and spoke in a flat tone.

He described how he took a bus from New Jersey to Buffalo the day before the attack, and then grabbed a Lyft to Chautauqua.

“It’s a nice place,” he said, referring to the bucolic nonprofit that turned into a site of terror Friday.

“I was hanging around pretty much. Not doing anything in particular, just walking around,” he added, saying he slept in the grass outside Thursday night. “I was just outside the whole time.”

While less familiar with Rushdie’s written work, Matar said he watched videos of the author on YouTube.

“I saw a lot of lectures,” he said. “I don’t like people who are disingenuous like that.”

Matar, who was born in the US to parents from southern Lebanon, did not respond to questions about a monthlong 2018 trip to the Middle Eastern country to visit his father, as reported by the Daily Mail.

His mother, who has disowned Matar over the alleged assault, said the visit “changed” him and that he became more religious and isolated himself in her basement after returning.

“I was expecting him to come back motivated, to complete school, to get his degree and a job. But instead he locked himself in the basement,” mom Silvana Fardos told the Mail. “He had changed a lot, he didn’t say anything to me or his sisters for months,”

Matar said he’d worked at a Marshalls in Edgewater in the fall for two months, but spent most of his time in his mom’s basement “using the internet, playing video games, watching Netflix, stuff like that.”

“I wanted a hobby, a recreational activity,” he said about his boxing gym in New Jersey.

Matar said little else about Rushdie specifically but complained about conditions in the jail, where he is being held without bail. “A lot of the food they have given me is not allowed in my religion to eat,” he said, adding that despite that, he is “doing all right.”

The Chautauqua County District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday that Matar may have a court appearance Thursday. He also has a preliminary hearing scheduled for Friday.

During Matar’s arraignment Saturday, Chautauqua County DA Jason Schmidt described the stabbing as “a targeted, preplanned unprovoked attack on Mr. Rushdie.”

Matar “didn’t bring a wallet. He had cash, prepaid Visa cards with him. He had false identification with him,” Schmidt said.

The prosecutor told Judge Marilyn Gerace that Rushdie suffered three stab wounds to the right side of his neck; four in the stomach; a puncture wound to his right eye, which he may lose; two puncture wounds to his chest; and a laceration to his right thigh.

Matar is being held without bail, in part because prosecutors feared he would be awarded a bounty for the attack.

“Even if this court sets a million-dollar bail, we stand a risk that this bail could be met because of that,” Schmidt said.

Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa called on his followers to kill anyone involved in the publication of Rushdie’s book, “The Satanic Verses.”

In 1991, Hitoshi Igarashi, the novel’s Japanese translator, was stabbed to death outside of his office at Tsukuba University.

That same month, Ettore Capriolo, the book’s Italian translator, was stabbed at his home in Milan. Capriolo survived the attack.

In 1998 Iranian officials tried to distance themselves from the fatwa. But anti-Rushdie sentiment has reportedly remained high in Iran, and some organizations have continued to call for his death.