TEHRAN -- Iran on Wednesday executed a 36-year-old man for helping the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, assassinate a senior officer in the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) in Tehran in 2022.
Mohsen Langarneshin was hanged, the usual method of execution in Iran, at Ghezel Hesar prison early on Wednesday morning.
According to IRNA, Langarneshin was a “senior spy” for the Mossad who provided critical “technical support” for the assassination of Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, a colonel in the IRGC who was shot five times by gunmen on a motorbike outside his home in Tehran, as well as for other alleged operations.
The IRNA report said the Mossad recruited Langarneshin in 2020 and that he met with Israeli intelligence officers in Georgia and Nepal. He was arrested in July 2023.
A series of Mossad attacks has targeted Iranian scientists, experts and academics. Last year, Israel assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the most senior political leader of Hamas, with a bomb in a bedroom of a guesthouse in Tehran.
Langarneshin was convicted on several charges, including logistical, technical and operation support for an attack on an industrial center affiliated with the Iranian Defense Ministry in Isfahan, purchasing instruments and telecommunication equipment for the Mossad operatives in Iran, purchasing vehicles and furnishing them with the necessary equipment for operations, transferring money from the Mossad officers to the operatives inside Iran, and renting safe houses in several provinces.
On several occasions, Langarneshin supplied Mossad agents inside Iran with anonymous SIM cards, mobile phones and portable Internet modems in order to get and keep them in touch with their masters in the Israeli-occupied territories.
He had met with senior Mossad officers twice in Georgia and Nepal to receive instructions for the operations.
Langarneshin had openly confessed to his crimes during all stages of interrogation, prosecution and court proceedings.