Iran hangs a man accused of spying for Israel in a wave of executions

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran said Monday it hanged a man accused of spying for Israel, the latest in the largest wave of executions by Tehran in decades.

Iran identified the executed man as Bahman Choobiasl. His case wasn’t immediately known in Iranian media reports or to activists monitoring the death penalty in the Islamic Republic.

The execution came as Iran vowed to confront its enemies after the United Nations reimposed sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear program this weekend. The European Union followed suit Monday, imposing similar sanctions on Iran.

Iran accused Choobiasl of meeting with officials from the Israeli spy agency Mossad, calling him the agency's “most trusted” spy. Iran’s Mizan news agency, which is the judiciary’s official mouthpiece, said Choobiasl worked on “sensitive telecommunications projects“ and reported about the “paths of importing electronic devices.”

Iran is known to have hanged nine people for espionage since its June war with Israel. Israel waged an air war with Iran, killing some 1,100 people, including many military commanders. Iran launched missile barrages targeting Israel in response.

Earlier this month, Iran executed Babak Shahbazi, who it alleged spied for Israel. Activists disputed that, saying Shahbazi was tortured into a false confession after writing a letter to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offering to fight for Kyiv.

Iran routinely conducts closed-door trials of those accused of espionage, with the suspects often unable to access the evidence against them.

Iran has faced multiple nationwide protests in recent years, fueled by anger over the economy, demands for women’s rights and calls for the country’s theocracy to change.

In response to those protests and the June war, Iran has been putting prisoners to death at a pace unseen since 1988, when it executed thousands at the end of the Iran-Iraq war.

The Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights and the Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran put the number of people executed in 2025 at over 1,000, noting the number could be higher as Iran does not report on each execution.

Independent human rights experts at the United Nations also criticized Iran's executions Monday.

“The sheer scale of executions in Iran is staggering and represents a grave violation of the right to life,” the experts said. “With an average of more than nine hangings per day in recent weeks, Iran appears to be conducting executions at an industrial scale that defies all accepted standards of human rights protection.”

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Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.