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Iran executed three men on Sunday, November 8, after convicting them of carrying out operations for Israel and the United States during the anti-government protests that swept the country in January, according to Iranian state media and the country’s judiciary.
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Shop NowThe men were identified as Hassan Dioband, Hamid Kazemi and Reza Zanganeh. The judiciary said the executions went ahead after Iran’s Supreme Court upheld their death sentences.
Authorities accused the three of taking part in armed attacks in Karaj, a city west of Tehran. According to the charges, they used firearms, grenades and Molotov cocktails against public facilities and damaged an electrical substation, cutting power to parts of the city.
Just the News reported that eight other defendants in the case received prison terms of five to 10 years. Reuters, citing the judiciary, gave a slightly different account: it said ten others accused of acting under Dioband’s direction were arrested after him, and that the remaining defendants were jailed for five to 10 years. Reuters also reported that the three condemned men were ordered to forfeit their assets.
According to Reuters, the judiciary said Dioband was detained on January 11, after investigators identified him as a suspect in attacks on public property.
The claim that the men worked on behalf of Washington and Israel comes from Iranian authorities.
Neither Just the News nor Reuters reported any response from the U.S. government or from President Trump, and neither report points to evidence of the alleged espionage beyond the statements of Iran’s judiciary and state media. The case was handled entirely by Iran’s own courts.
The executions are not an isolated case. Just the News described them as part of a wider crackdown on people detained in connection with the January demonstrations.
Reuters reported that Iran has carried out a series of executions in recent months tied to those protests, some of them of people accused of links to Israel and the United States, and that thousands of protesters were killed by Iranian forces as the unrest was put down.
For now, the public record of the case is the judiciary’s announcement and Iranian state media coverage. Both Just the News and Reuters attribute the charges, the sentences, and the Supreme Court’s role to those official Iranian sources, and the two reports differ on how many co-defendants were involved. Readers should weigh the espionage allegation with that sourcing in mind.
