Iranian state television has reported that Iran has executed Mahmoud Mousavi Majd, an alleged spy who passed information about Qassem Soleimani to the US and Israel.
ADVERTISEMENTIran has executed a man convicted of allegedly spying on slain Revolutionary Guard general, Qassem Soleimani, for intelligence agencies in the US and Israel, according to a report by Iranian state television.
The report said the death sentence was carried out against Mahmoud Mousavi Majd, without elaborating.
The country’s judiciary had said in June that Majd was “linked to the CIA and the Mossad,” the Israeli intelligence agency, and alleged that Majd shared security information on the Guard and its expeditionary unit, called the Quds, or Jerusalem Force, which Qassem Soleimani commanded.
The death sentence was pronounced in September by the country's judiciary after Iranian surveillance revealed that he had "received US dollars in exchange for spying and disclosing information about the details of advisory units, weapons, telecommunication systems, introducing commanders and their travels [...] and the geographical locations of important centres and codes," the judiciary's Mizan Online website wrote.
The US considered Soleimani to be the second most powerful person in Iran behind Ayatollah Khamenei and his right-hand man, and asserted that he had intended further attacks on American diplomats and troops at the time of his death.
The assassination heightened decades-old tensions between the two countries, with Iran later retaliating for the killing with a ballistic missile strike on US forces in Iraq on January 7.
Soon after the airstrike, the Revolutionary Guard accidentally shot down a Ukrainian international flight shortly after takeoff from the Iranian capital Tehran, killing all 176 passengers on board.