Iran executes three prisoners accused of spying for Israel
The hangings happened in Urmia Prison in Iran's West Azerbaijan province, the country's most north-west province, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
IRNA said Iran's judiciary claimed the men had been accused of bringing 'assassination equipment' into the country.
Iran has carried out several hangings during its war with Israel, sparking fears from activists that it could conduct a wave of executions after the conflict ended.
Iran identified the three men executed as Azad Shojaei, Edris Aali and Iraqi national Rasoul Ahmad Rasoul.
People began to return to their normal lives as a ceasefire with Israel appeared to be holding (Ohad Zwigenberg/AP)
Amnesty International had previously raised concerns that the men could be executed.
Wednesday's executions bring the total number of hangings for espionage around the war up to six since June 16.
Activists fear more people will be executed, particularly after Iran's theocracy issued a deadline for people to turn themselves in over spying.
People in Iran, meanwhile, began trying to return to their normal lives as a shaky ceasefire with Israel, negotiated by US President Donald Trump, appeared to be holding.
State media described heavy traffic around the Caspian Sea area and other rural areas outside of the capital, Tehran, as people began returning to the city.
Tehran experienced intense Israeli airstrikes throughout the war, including those that targeted Iran's top military leadership and other sites associated with its ruling theocracy.
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The Iranian regime has already been greatly weakened by a series of counter-revolutionary protests, from the 2009 Green Movement to the more recent 'Women, Life, Freedom' uprising. And now, with millions of Iranians quietly and not so quietly celebrating the Israeli attacks on regime henchmen and on its hated Basij militia, which enforces internal security, the pressure for regime change may come from inside. And we should welcome it, not fear it. No one is talking about US or Israeli troops invading or occupying Iran. But we shouldn't try to thwart change and prop up the regime, as Barack Obama was accused of doing during the pro-democracy protests in 2009. Whether the regime falls remains to be seen. But for now, the campaign against Iran has been a triumph for Trump and even more so for Netanyahu. The campaign against Iran's nuclear weapons programme and the missile systems developed to deliver nuclear warheads has been compared with Israel's victory in the 1967 war when this tiny, outnumbered and outgunned democracy overcame three invading Arab armies in just six days. Three days after the 7 October massacre, an official I spoke to said that Netanyahu made a strategic decision to go methodically piece by piece against each component of the Iranian axis: Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Assad regime and finally Iran and its nuclear programme and its tens of thousands of ballistic missiles. Incredibly, there are still regime propagandists in the West who peddle the lie that Iran's nuclear programme is for the development of energy, not weapons. Does anyone seriously think that the Iranian regime – whose stated goal is to commit genocide against Israel and others – has spent tens of billions of dollars building one of the world's most heavily fortified sites buried deep under a mountain, in which far more uranium has already been enriched than could possibly be needed for civil purposes, for any other reason than to build nuclear weapons? Does anyone seriously believe that the regime in Tehran, which has been known to beat women to death for not wearing a hijab and hang gay men from cranes, would give up its decades-long quest for nuclear weapons merely because the likes of David Lammy or Emmanuel Macron ask it nicely to do so? Israelis certainly do not. Nor do Arabs. Had the international community allowed Iran's regime to acquire nuclear weapons, it would have sparked a nuclear arms race. Several Arab states, as well as Turkey, have made it clear that they would be left with little choice but to pursue nuclear weapons programmes of their own. They don't worry that Israel will use nuclear weapons, except as a very last resort. They do, however, fear Iran. Some European countries whose people have lived under tyrannies not so dissimilar from Iran's are under no illusions either. They immediately declared their full support for Israel's campaign against Iran's nukes. The Czech government and opposition both did so, as did Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz. As did Ukraine, where they know what it is like to be on the receiving end of Iranian drones. By contrast, the British and French governments have shown the world just how insipid they have become, issuing vapid platitudes and calling for a premature ceasefire that would have left Iran's nuclear programme largely intact. In case it hasn't sunk in, Britain is also a target of the mullahs. Crowds bussed into Tehran from the countryside each week (many paid by the regime) are instructed to chant not just 'Death to America' and 'Death to Israel' but also 'Death to Britain'. Too often, what starts with Israel soon affects the rest of us: airline hijacking, suicide bombs and more. We should not rule out the possibility of Iranian missile attacks on western cities if the country's military capabilities are not kept in check. What kind of message does Britain's feeble response send to the world, including Islamists already operating within our borders? That Britain has neither the will nor the ability to defend itself. Likewise, desperate calls by British politicians for a premature ceasefire in Gaza, which would have left a still-armed Hamas in power to fight another day, would have all but removed the possibility of long-term peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Instead, an agreement to end the war in which Hamas agrees to disarm, and a peaceful Palestinian government can run Gaza, will be much easier to achieve now that Hamas's Iranian backers have been so severely weakened. Other European governments – notably Spain, Ireland and Belgium – have been even more outspoken in denouncing Israel, in effect backing the Iranian regime. There are disturbing echoes of Ireland's leaders sending their condolences to the Nazis after Hitler shot himself in 1945. We also have the usual voices in the West arguing that the strikes were ultimately futile because the Iranian regime will simply rebuild its nuclear programme so it can wreak fiery vengeance upon its enemies. Similar arguments were made in 1981 after Israel bombed Saddam Hussein's nuclear programme in Iraq, and in 2007 after Israel bombed Bashar al-Assad's nuclear programme in Syria. Neither Saddam nor Assad managed to rebuild. Another nonsensical argument being advanced after Tuesday's ceasefire is that a wounded and vengeful Iran may seek to destabilise the region. Who do these pundits think has already been destabilising the region all these years? Who destabilised Lebanon through the Hezbollah militia, which is effectively a subsidiary of Iran's Revolutionary Guard? Which country has destabilised Yemen, leading to millions of deaths through war and famine? Who destabilised Syria by bringing in thousands of heavily armed Shia militia to provide the core of Assad's army, driving millions of Syria's majority Sunni population into exile across Europe? And who gave arms and training to Hamas to carry out the biggest massacre against Jews since the Holocaust? In all cases, Iran. We should be thankful to Trump (who defied his critics in America on both left and right) and Netanyahu for holding back this expansionist Iranian regime. Arab leaders are. Hamas and Hezbollah have been cut down to size by Israel. Now there is at least the prospect for a better situation in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere. President Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel peace prize in his very first year in office, yet in his two terms he achieved precisely zero peace deals. In 2016 alone, Obama dropped 26,172 bombs on seven different countries, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Yet he is still spoken of in the loftiest tones by the liberal establishment on both sides of the Atlantic as a great peacemaker. Trump and Netanyahu, by contrast, are regularly condemned as war criminals and threatened with all kinds of legal action. Yet they have signed four peace deals as part of the Abraham Accords, which, thanks in part to their actions against Iran, may now expand to include Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world. They have demonstrated a simple lesson, one that Britain should have learnt from Churchill: a genuine peace sometimes requires the West's enemies to be defeated, not accommodated.
