Iran says it will execute spy who provided information on Soleimani to CIA

Iran said Tuesday it will execute the person who provided information to the U.S. and Israel on Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Iraq earlier this year.

Officials, however, reportedly said the conviction was not linked to Soleimani’s killing. 

“Mahmoud Mousavi-Majd, one of the spies for the CIA and the Mossad, has been sentenced to death … He had shared information about the whereabouts of martyr Soleimani with our enemies,” judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said in a televised news conference, according to Reuters. 

Esmaili reportedly said Mousavi-Majd passed security information to Israeli and American intelligence agencies “about Iran’s armed forces, particularly the Guards.”  

Esmaili said Mousavi-Majd’s death sentence has been upheld by a supreme court and said he will be “executed soon,” according to Reuters. 

The judiciary later said in a statement that Mousavi-Majd’s conviction was not linked to Soleimani’s killing, which the judiciary called a “terrorist act of the U.S. government,” according to Reuters. 

“All the legal proceedings in the case of this spy … had been carried out long before the martyrdom of Soleimani,” the statement reportedly said. The judiciary added that Mousavi-Majd had been arrested in October 2018. 

Officials have not said whether Mousavi-Majd’s case is linked to Iran’s announcement last summer that it captured 17 spies working for the CIA, according to Reuters. 

Officials have also not said whether the case is linked to Iran’s announcement in February that Iran sentenced a man to death for spying for the CIA and attempting to pass on information about Tehran’s nuclear program, the news wire reports. 

Soleimani’s killing earlier this year in a U.S. drone strike led to increased tension between Iran and the U.S.