Iran says will execute spy who helped US target general

TEHRAN: Tehran said on Tuesday it will execute an Iranian for spying for the United States and Israel after his conviction was upheld for helping the US to locate a top Iranian general killed in a drone strike.

Mahmoud Mousavi Majd was convicted of spying on Iran’s armed forces, "especially the Quds Force and on the whereabouts and movements of martyr General Qasem Soleimani", judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said in a news conference.

Majd had been found guilty of receiving large sums of money from both the US Central Intelligence Agency and Israel’s Mossad, Esmaili said. His sentence was upheld by Iran’s supreme court and would be "carried out soon", the spokesman added.

Soleimani headed the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, and was killed in January in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport. Iran retaliated by firing a volley of ballistic missiles at US troops stationed in Iraq, but US President Donald Trump opted against responding militarily. While the attack on the western Iraqi base of Ain Al-Asad left no US soldiers dead, dozens suffered brain trauma.