The executed, called "Mahmud Musavi Majd", "in exchange for receiving US dollars had provided information about different security areas to foreign secret services"

Iran executes man for spying for CIA and Israeli Mossad

photo_camera AFP/SAUL LOEB - Lobby of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters in Langley, Virginia

The judiciary of the Islamic Republic of Iran on Monday applied the death penalty to an Iranian citizen convicted of spying for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Israeli secret service (Mossad). The executed man, called "Mahmud Mousavi Majd", according to the Iranian judiciary "in exchange for receiving US dollars had provided information about different security areas to foreign secret services", said the Iranian Judiciary News Agency, Mizan. 

Previously, the spokesman for the judiciary, Gholamhosein Esmaili, had explained that Mousavi Majd had provided "above all, information regarding the armed forces, including the Quds Force" of the Guardians of the Revolution. Mousavi Majd, arrested two years ago, according to the judiciary "provided information on the place of stay and movements of martyred General Qassem Soleimani to foreigners". 

The Iranian authorities report with some frequency the arrest of alleged CIA spies and also the death sentences of some of them. In early July, the death penalty was imposed on a former employee of the Iranian Ministry of Defense who had been convicted of spying for the CIA. According to Esmaili's explanations, Asgari was tried and sentenced to death for "selling information to the CIA" about Iran's missile system, with which he was "familiar" since he worked "for many years" in the Defense Ministry's aerospace sector. 

Iran and the U.S. have had no diplomatic relations for four decades, and one of the aspects of Iranian weaponry that most concerns Washington is precisely ballistic missile systems. The bilateral tension grew at the beginning of this year after the assassination of the powerful Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in the US bombing of Baghdad last January.

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