This Friday, Iran executed four people, including a woman, who were sentenced to death by an Islamic Republic court after being found guilty of spying for the Mossad, Israel's secret service, according to Iran's official IRNA news agency. “Four members of a sabotage group with ties to the Zionist regime were hanged this morning in the northwestern Iranian province of West Azerbaijan,” said the official Mizan Online website attached to the Justice Department. Those executed were arrested in October last year along with six other people, of whom it is not known whether they will also be sent to the gallows.
“Members of this group received money from agents of Zionist units and Mossad officers on several occasions in return for the tasks they performed and communicated directly with Israeli intelligence officers,” the IRNA report continued. According to the judiciary, the members of “this network (…) carried out tasks assigned to them by the Zionist secret service with the intention of disrupting national security through murder, kidnapping, destruction and arson.”
The semi-official Tasnim news agency identified the four executed as Vafa Hanareh, Aram Omari and Rahman Parhazo, as well as the woman Nasim Namazi. A video shared by IRNA shows the men confessing to their alleged collaboration with a Mossad officer in Turkey. They said their mission was to hijack, threaten and set fire to vehicles and houses of unknown targets, as well as stealing cell phones. International human rights organizations and Iranian exiles have often denounced the fact that Iranian courts sentence many people to death solely based on confessions extracted under torture.
This is the latest in a series of executions and prison sentences in Iran. On the 16th, Iranian authorities imposed the death penalty on a man convicted of spying for foreign intelligence services, including the Mossad. According to Amnesty International, Iran is the country in the world that uses the death penalty most often relative to its population. In 2022, 576 executions were carried out, a significant increase from 314 the previous year. The country has executed more than 750 people so far in 2023, most of them for crimes related to drug trafficking and possession, according to human rights groups. Another group, Iran Human Rights (IHR), based in Norway, counted at least 600 executions as of October.
The Islamic Republic and Israel are bitter enemies, viewing each other as existential threats, competing for regional hegemony and waging a covert war of cyberattacks, assassinations and sabotage. Tensions have increased since Israel's offensive in Gaza last October.
In August, Iran accused Israel of being behind “one of the largest sabotage attacks” against its defense industry and missile production. In July, the Intelligence Ministry claimed to have arrested a network of agents working for Israel before they could carry out sabotage in sensitive locations. Israel has neither denied nor confirmed the allegations.
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In January last year, Israel said it had dismantled an Iranian spy network that recruited Israeli women through Facebook to gain access to blocked websites. In April 2021, Tehran blamed Israel for an act of “nuclear terrorism” for cutting off power to its Natanz uranium enrichment plant in the desert of central Isfahan province, about 400 kilometers south of Tehran.
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