ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iran is set to “imminently” put to death an alleged spy responsible for providing intelligence that led to the US-ordered drone strike that killed General Qasem Soleimani, officials said Tuesday.
Sayyid Mahmoud Mousavi Majd, an Iranian citizen, is accused of providing intelligence to American and Israeli spies about the movement of Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force.
Soleimani was killed by a drone strike in Baghdad on January 3.
“Majd was linked to the Mossad and the CIA and in return for American dollars, provided intelligence in the field of security, and in particular the armed forces including the Quds force to these spy agencies,” Gholam Hossein Esmaili, spokesperson for Iran’s judiciary said on Tuesday.
“For this he was sentenced to death by a court and the branch 19 of the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence,” Esmaili said, adding that the sentence of execution “will be implemented imminently.”
General Soleimani was killed alongside Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the operational head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). Iran responded to the attack by firing missiles at Ain al-Assad base near Baghdad causing injuries to several American service members based there.
The killing of Soleimani came after months of tensions between Iran and the US in the Persian Gulf which many feared would bring the two adversaries to the brink of a devastating war for the region.
Soleimani was the most well-known IRGC commander who implemented the instructions of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the policies outlined by the Iran’s Supreme National Security Council across the Middle East. His death caused uproar across Iran. Tens of thousands of people participated in demonstrations chanting for revenge against America.
Iranian media outlets published a photo purported to show Majd with IRGC commander Hossein Hamadani, who was killed in Aleppo in 2015. Hamadani, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, was a close companion of Soleimani’s. While his face has been blurred, it appears that the man shown was particularly close to IRGC Quds Force commanders in Syria, and may have been a member of the Quds Force.
