Iran has executed six fighters accused of waging armed attacks in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, according to state media, as the country continues its accelerated executions of people it says have ties to Israel following the 12-day June conflict with Israel and the United States.
“The death sentence for six separatist terrorist elements, who in recent years had carried out a series of armed operations and bombings targeting security in Khuzestan province, was carried out at dawn today,” the judiciary said on its Mizan website on Saturday.
The identities of all those executed and details of their arrests and sentencing were not immediately clear.
But Mizan reported that they were involved in the killings of four security personnel, including two police officers and two members of the Basij paramilitary force, in 2018 and 2019.
The report also said they had “confessed to planning and executing acts of sabotage such as making and planting bombs, blowing up the Khorramshahr gas station”.
Iran usually links what it calls “separatist and terrorist” groups to its arch-nemesis, Israel.
In a separate execution on Saturday, authorities hanged Kurdish fighter Saman Mohammadi after convicting him for “Moharebeh” – waging war against God.
Mohammadi, arrested in 2013, was reportedly involved in the 2009 killing of the Friday prayers imam in the western city of Sanandaj, as well as in armed robberies and kidnappings, including the killing of a conscript.
The executions came less than a week after Iran said it hanged Bahman Choobiasl, a man it described as “one of the most important spies for Israel in Iran”.
Mizan reported that Choobiasl was executed over his meeting with officials from the Israeli spy agency, Mossad.
According to Mizan, Choobiasl had worked on “sensitive telecommunications projects”.
Iran’s Supreme Court rejected the defendant’s appeal and confirmed the death sentence on charges of “corruption on Earth”, it said.
Entangled in a decades-long shadow war with Israel, and a full-blown conflict this June, Iran has put to death many individuals it accuses of having links with Mossad and facilitating its operations in the country.
Israel’s offensive in June involved 12 days of air attacks, including several that targeted Iran’s top generals and nuclear scientists, as well as civilians in residential areas, for which Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles and drones. The US also carried out extensive strikes, on Israel’s behalf, on Iranian nuclear sites during the conflict. According to Amnesty International, Israeli attacks on Iran killed at least 1,100 people.
In response to the June war and protests in recent years over the state of the economy, women’s rights and some calls for regime change, Iran has sentenced more people to death.
According to the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights and the Washington, DC-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, the number of people executed in 2025 was more than 1,000, but it notes that the number could be higher as Tehran does not report each execution.
Iran is the world’s second most prolific executioner after China, according to human rights groups including Amnesty International.
