Iran executes alleged spy Reza Asgari for selling CIA info on Iranian missiles
Tehran, Iran — Iran has executed a former employee of the defense ministry who was convicted of spying on behalf of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the country's judiciary said Tuesday. It was the second such execution in the past month.
The report said Reza Asgari was executed last week. Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said Asgari had worked in the airspace department of Iran's defense ministry and retired in 2016.
"In the last years of his service, he joined the CIA, he sold information about our missiles ... to the CIA and took money from them," Esmaili said. "He was identified, tried and sentenced to death."
Occasionally Iran announces arrests and convictions of alleged spies for foreign countries, including the U.S. and Israel.
In June, Iran said another alleged spy, Jalal Hajizavar, was hanged in a prison near Tehran. The report said Hajizavar — also a former staffer of the defense ministry — had admitted in court that he was paid to spy for the CIA.
The report said authorities had also confiscated espionage equipment from his residence. It said the court sentenced Hajizavar's wife to 15 years in prison for her role in the espionage.
Before that, in 2016, Iran executed a nuclear scientist convicted of spying for the United States.
Iranian officials also said last month that another alleged spy, Mahmoud Mousavi Majd, had been convicted of snooping on the Islamic Republic's armed forces, "especially the Quds Force and on the whereabouts and movements of martyr General Qasem Soleimani," who was blown up by a U.S. done strike in Iraq.
Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said in early June that Majd had been found guilty of receiving money from the CIA and Israel's Mossad intelligence agency and that his execution would be "carried out soon," according to a spokesman. There has been no update from Iranian authorities on Majd's fate.
