Iran executes a man convicted of spying for the Israeli Mossad

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran executed Wednesday a man it said worked for Israel’s foreign intelligence agency and played a role in the 2022 killing of a Revolutionary Guard colonel in Tehran, the official IRNA news agency reported.

The report identified the man as Mohsen Langarneshin and said he was hanged. It called him a “senior spy” for the Mossad who provided “technical support” in the assassination of Col. Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, shot five times by gunmen on a motorbike outside his home in Tehran.

The agency said the Mossad recruited Langarneshin in 2020 and that he met with Israeli intelligence officers in Georgia and Nepal.

Langarneshin reportedly rented safe houses for operatives in several Iranian cities, including Isfahan, when, in January 2023, bomb-carrying drones targeted what Iran described as a military workshop. Iran has accused Israel of being behind the attack.

The report said Langerneshin confessed in Iran’s Revolutionary Court.

The court was established following the 1979 Islamic Revolution and is known for meting out harsh punishments to those who oppose Iran’s clerical rulers. It usually provides a court-appointed lawyer and doesn’t allow media access.

At the time of his assassination, local media identified Khodaei only as a “defender of the shrine,” a reference to Iranians who fight against the extremist Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq within the Guard’s elite Quds force that oversees foreign operations.