Iran to execute informant who led CIA to Soleimani

The Hassan Rouhani government on Tuesday said that it will execute a man whose conviction for spying for the United States and Israel by helping to target top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani has been upheld by the Supreme Court.

“Mahmoud Mousavi 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 U.S. Central Intelligence Agency”, judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said in a conference.

“Majd’s death sentence has been upheld by the Supreme Court and will be carried out soon,” he added.

Soleimani, who headed the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, was killed in January in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad.

“Mahmoud Mousavi-Majd, one of the spies for the CIA and Mossad, gave the whereabouts of martyr Soleimani to our enemies,” Esmaili said.

Iran in February handed down a similar sentence for Amir Rahimpour, convicted of spying for the U.S. 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 street protests across Iran that erupted the previous month over a surprise petrol 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.

Soleimani’s killing led to a peak in the confrontation between Iran and the U.S.

Iran retaliated with a rocket attack on an Iraqi air base where U.S. forces were stationed. Hours later, Iranian forces on high alert mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian passenger airliner taking off from Tehran.