Tehran -- Iran executed a man whom its courts convicted of spying for Israel’s Mossad, state media reported Wednesday.

The execution came as tensions have risen between the two countries, which exchanged renewed threats of violence in recent weeks, roughly six months after fighting a 12-day war. It also happened as protests against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime took place across Iran.

The official IRNA news agency identified the executed man as Ali Ardestani, and claimed he relayed sensitive information to the Israeli spy agency’s officers in return for financial rewards in the form of cryptocurrencies.

The report said the man confessed to the spying charges, and that he had hoped to receive a million-dollar reward, as well as a British visa. It labeled Ardestani a “special operative force of Israel” and claimed he gave images and footage of “special places” to Mossad agents.

IRNA did not elaborate about the time and place of his detention.

The report said Israel recruited Ardestani online, adding that his case went through legal procedures, both in primary courts and the country’s Supreme Court.

Demonstrators hang an effigy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the funeral for seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members killed in a strike in Syria, which Iran blamed on Israel, in Tehran, Iran, on April 5, 2024. 

Human rights organizations and Western governments have condemned Iran’s increasing use of capital punishment, particularly for political and espionage-related offenses.

Activists argue that many of the convictions rely on coerced confessions, and that trials often take place behind closed doors, without access to independent legal representation. 

Tehran, however, maintains that those executed were “agents of hostile intelligence services” involved in acts of terrorism or sabotage.

Iran executed at least 1,500 people in 2025, the Norway-based Iran Human Rights group says, in what it calls an “unprecedented” hike in the use of capital punishment.

“It is unprecedented in the last 35 years. As long as Iran Human Rights has existed, we have never had such numbers,” the group’s director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, says.

Tehran is known to have executed 12 people for espionage since the 12-day air war between Israel and Iran, killing nearly 1,100 people in the Islamic Republic, including senior military commanders and nuclear scientists.