Four people were sentenced to death by a revolutionary court in northwestern Iran over charges of spying for Israel, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Wednesday.
Fars said three of the defendants — whose nationalities it did not give — were accused of helping Israel’s spy agency Mossad move equipment used in the 2020 assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Fakhrizadeh was viewed by Western intelligence services as the mastermind of a covert Iranian program to develop nuclear weapons capability. The Islamic Republic has long denied any such ambition.
The Jewish Chronicle newspaper reported in February 2021, citing intelligence sources, that Fakhrizadeh was killed by a one-ton gun smuggled into Iran in pieces by Mossad agents, both Israeli and Iranian nationals.
Israel declined to comment at the time of his killing, and on Wednesday an Israeli government spokesman said in response to the Fars report: “We never comment on such matters. There has been no change in our position.”
Fars said the fourth defendant sentenced to death was linked to another unspecified espionage case.
Iran and Israel were locked in a shadow war for decades, with mutual allegations of sabotage and assassination plots. But that conflict has become direct this year, with Israel bracing for a possible Iranian response to airstrikes launched on October 26 targeting military sites in the Islamic Republic that were a retaliation for Tehran’s October 1 missile attack.
The Islamic Republic launched some 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, sending most of the population rushing to bomb shelters and safe rooms. The assault — its second direct attack on Israel, after a drone and missile strike in April — caused relatively minor damage to military bases and some residential areas in Israel and killed a Palestinian man in the West Bank.
At least four soldiers were killed in Israel’s airstrikes on Iran, which also caused “limited damage” to a few radar systems, officials said at the time. Iranian media also reported that a civilian had been killed.
Efforts by Iran to downplay the attack faltered as satellite photos and multiple reports in global media showed Israel’s strikes had crippled Iran’s ballistic missile production by destroying at least a dozen solid fuel mixers, and disabled crucial air defenses protecting major energy installations.
Iran does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. Khamenei has previously called Israel a “cancerous tumor” that “will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed.”
Source » timesofisrael