Iran executes man convicted of spying for the United States and Israel

Iran has executed a man convicted of spying for the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.

Mahmoud Mousavi-Majd was accused of reporting on the movements of Iranian forces in Syria and of spying on the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, Qasem Soleimani.

Soleimani died in a US drone attack earlier this year.

Last week, Iran executed a former defense ministry employee convicted of selling information to the United States.

The official news agency of the Iranian judiciary, Mizan Online, said Majd’s death sentence “was carried out on Monday morning on the espionage charge so that the case of his betrayal of his country is closed forever “

Earlier this month, a news agency spokesman said the former translator had been sentenced to death for spying on “various security fields, especially the armed forces and the Quds Force and the whereabouts and movements of the martyr General Qasem Soleimani” .

The spokesman, Gholamhossein Esmaili, said Majd had been convicted of receiving money from the CIA and the Mossad.

The judiciary said in June that Majd was arrested about two years ago and was not directly involved in the attack on General Soleimani. Some Iranian news agencies reported that Majd had been arrested by the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah and extradited to Iran.

Majd’s execution comes days after another Iranian convicted of selling information to the United States. Mizan Online said Reza Asgari had relayed the details of Iran’s missile program to the CIA after retiring from the defense ministry’s aerospace division in 2016.

Last July, Iran’s intelligence ministry said it had arrested 17 people accused of gathering information about the country’s nuclear and military sectors for the CIA. The ministry said some had been sentenced to death but did not name them.

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, rejected that announcement as “totally false.”