Iran said Tuesday it will execute a man Tehran has claimed worked as a spy, and was involved in the targeted killing of a top Iranian military commander.
The conviction of the alleged spy, Mahmoud Mousavi Majd, has been upheld by the Iranian supreme court, which accepted the prosecution's claim that Majd aided the US in targeting Quds Force commander General Qassem Soleimani.
Soleimani, one of the top leaders in Iran's Revolutionary Guards, was killed on January 3rd in a targeted strike by US forces at Baghdad International Airport.
Iran has claimed that Majd worked for both the CIA and Israel's Mossad.
Majd was convicted of spying on Iran's armed forces "especially the Quds Force and on the whereabouts and movements of martyr General Qasem Soleimani" for large sums of money from both Israel's Mossad and the US Central Intelligence Agency, judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili told a televised news conference.
Iran in February handed down a similar sentence for Amir Rahimpour, another man convicted of spying for the US and conspiring to sell information on Iran's nuclear program.
Tehran announced in December it had arrested eight people "linked to the CIA" and involved in nationwide street protests that erupted the previous month over a surprise gas price hike.
It also said in July 2019 that it had dismantled a CIA spy ring, arresting 17 suspects between March 2018 and March 2019 and sentencing some of them to death.
President Donald Trump at the time dismissed the claim as "totally false".