Iran has hanged a man suspected of being “one of the most important spies for Israel in Iran” in the 10th such execution following the 12-day war in June with Israel and the United States, according to Iran’s Mizan news agency.
On Monday, Mizan, the judiciary’s news outlet, reported that Bahman Choobiasl was executed over his meeting with officials from the Israeli spy agency, Mossad.
According to Mizan, Choobiasl had worked on “sensitive telecommunications projects”.
“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.
Iran’s Supreme Court rejected the defendant’s appeal and confirmed the death sentence on charges of “corruption on earth”, it said.
Choobiasl is the second person to be executed this month after Babak Shahbazi was hanged, also held guilty of spying for Israel.
However, activists disputed the claim and said Shahbazi was tortured into a false confession after writing a letter to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to offer to fight in Kyiv.
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. Iran is known to have executed 10 people for espionage since the June conflict.
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 Centre for Human Rights in Iran, the number of people executed in 2025 was more than 1,000, but notes that the number could be higher as Tehran does not report each execution.
In the meantime, Iranians fear more economic pain and a possible reignition of war with Israel. After about a decade, Iran is once more subject to United Nations sanctions as the West piles pressure on Tehran, despite opposition from Russia and China.
The sanctions were automatically reinstated on Sunday after the European signatories of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal invoked the “snapback” mechanism of the landmark accord to reactivate them.
