Mizan News, an agency affiliated with Iran's judiciary, reported that a former defence minister named Ali Reza Akbari has been executed.
Despite international pressure not to carry out the death sentence, Iran claimed on Saturday that it had executed a former senior officer in the defence ministry who was also a dual citizen of Iran and the United Kingdom.
As the Islamic Republic was being rocked by widespread anti-government rallies, the execution heightened tensions with the West.
The execution of Ali Reza Akbari, a close associate of senior security official Ali Shamkhani, raises the possibility of an ongoing power struggle within the Iranian theocracy as it attempts to control protests following the killing of Mahsa Amini in September. It also reminded them of the widespread military purges that took place right after Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979.
London, which, along with the US and other countries, has sanctioned Iran over the protests and its supplying Russ...