Iran hangs three men and a woman convicted of spying for Israel. international

According to the official Iranian news agency IRNA, this Friday Iran executed four people, including a woman, who were sentenced to death by a court in the Islamic Republic after being found guilty of spying for Israel’s intelligence services Mossad . “Four members of a sabotage group linked to the Zionist regime were hanged this morning in the northwestern Iranian province of West Azerbaijan,” the judiciary-linked official Mizan Online website said. Those executed were arrested in October last year along with six others, of whom it is not specified whether they will also be taken to the gallows.

“Members of this group received money from Zionist Unit agents and Mossad officers on several occasions in exchange for the tasks they completed and communicated directly with the authorities,” IRNA reported. According to the judiciary, “the members of that network (…) carried out the tasks assigned to them by the Zionist Intelligence Service with the intention of disrupting national security through methods of murder, kidnapping, destruction and arson.”

The semi-official Tasnim news agency identified the four killed as Wafa Hanareh, Aram Omari and Rahman Parhazo, as well as the woman, Naseem Namazi. A video shared by IRNA shows people confessing their alleged cooperation with a Mossad officer in Turkey. He said their missions included kidnapping, intimidation and setting fire to vehicles and homes of unknown targets, as well as stealing mobile phones. International human rights organizations and exiled Iranians have often condemned that Iranian courts execute many people based solely on confessions obtained under torture.

It is the latest in a series of hangings and executions in Iran. On the 16th, Iranian authorities implemented the death penalty against a man convicted of spying for foreign intelligence services, including the Mossad. According to Amnesty International, Iran is the country in the world that applies the death penalty the most in relation to its population, with 576 executions in 2022, significantly more than 314 the previous year. According to human rights groups, more than 750 people have been executed in the country so far in 2023, the majority for crimes related to drug trafficking and possession. Another Norway-based group, Iran Human Rights (IHR), counted at least 600 executions by October.

The Islamic Republic and Israel are staunch enemies, considering each other a mutual existential threat, competing for regional hegemony and maintaining a secret war with cyber attacks, assassinations and sabotage. Tensions have increased since Israel launched an attack on the Gaza Strip last October.

In August, Iran accused Israel of being behind “one of the largest sabotage plots” against its defense industry and missile production. In July, its intelligence ministry claimed that a network of agents working for Israel had been detained before carrying out sabotage attacks on sensitive locations. Israel has neither denied nor confirmed the allegations.

In January last year, Israel said it had dismantled an Iranian spy network that recruited Israeli women through Facebook to access banned sites. In April 2021, Tehran blamed Israel for an act of “nuclear terrorism” for a power outage at its Natanz uranium enrichment facility in the desert of the central province of Isfahan, about 400 kilometers south of Tehran.

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