Iran hangs ‘one of most important spies’ for Israel amid wave of executions

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran executed a man named Bahman Choubi-asl on Monday, the judiciary’s news outlet Mizan said, saying the defendant was “one of the most important spies for Israel in Iran.”

Iran identified the executed man as Bahman Choobi-asl, whose case wasn’t immediately known in Iranian media reports or to activists monitoring the death penalty in the Islamic Republic. However, the execution came after Iran vowed to confront its enemies after the United Nations reimposed sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear program this weekend.

Iran accused Choobi-asl of meeting with officials from the Israeli spy agency Mossad. Tehran frequently accuses citizens of spying for Israel without providing evidence.

Mizan, said Choobi-asl worked on “sensitive telecommunications projects” and reported about the “paths of importing electronic devices.”

“The main goal of Mossad in attracting the defendant’s cooperation was to obtain the database of governmental institutions and create a breach in Iranian data centres, along with which it also pursued other secondary goals, including investigating the route of importing electronic equipment,” Mizan said.

The Supreme Court had rejected the defendant’s appeal and confirmed the death sentence on charges of “corruption on earth,” it said.

Iran is known to have hanged nine people for espionage since its June war with Israel. The Israel Defense Forces conducted a sweeping assault on Iran’s top military leaders, nuclear scientists, uranium enrichment sites, and ballistic missile program. Jerusalem said the attack was necessary to prevent the Islamic Republic from realizing its avowed plan to destroy the Jewish state, and that Tehran had been taking concrete steps toward assembling an atomic bomb.

Iran responded by firing missile barrages at Israeli cities and military sites.

Entangled in a decades-long shadow war with Israel, Iran has put to death many individuals it accuses of having links with the Mossad and facilitating its operations in the country.

Earlier this month, Iran executed Babak Shahbazi, who it alleged spied for Israel. Activists disputed that, saying Shahbazi was tortured into a false confession after writing a letter to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky offering to fight for Kyiv.

Iran has faced multiple nationwide protests in recent years, fueled by anger over the economy, demands for women’s rights and calls for the country’s theocracy to change.

In response to those protests and the June war, Iran has been putting prisoners to death at a pace unseen since 1988, when it executed thousands at the end of the Iran-Iraq war.

The Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights and the Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran put the number of people executed in 2025 at over 1,000, noting the number could be higher as Iran does not report on each execution.