The trend in Iran for outing networks of Israeli “spies” and executing them continues. A few days after the execution of Ali Ashtari, a 45 year old salesman, the regime has announced the cracking of “spy ring” involving three suspects - and it is seeking the death penalty for them.

Nazila Fathi reports:

The prosecutor general, Saeed Mortazavi, said that the suspects, members of Basij, Iran’s volunteer militia, were expected to get close to senior members of the Revolutionary Guards so they could “assassinate military scientists and blow up strategic military and missile facilities.” At a news conference covered by the semiofficial Fars news agency, he said they would be tried within a month and if convicted of “moharebeh,” crimes against Islam and the state, would be sentenced to death. Conviction on lesser charges could mean 10 years in prison, he said.

Mr. Mortazavi said the suspects had been trained in 21 sessions to carry out assassinations, plant bombs, drive cars and motorcycles professionally and use special cameras, computers and satellite equipment. Three additional suspects are under surveillance, he said.

While there is no explicit linkage with Iran’s nuclear weapons program - by definition, one cannot be made, given that the regime denies the program exists - the targets of the alleged espionage (”strategic military and missile facilities”) strongly suggest that Iran wants the rest of the world to believe that something dangerous is being developed in the shadows.

The current wave of espionage-related repression has not slowed the regime’s more general assault on human rights. Education International reports that Farzad Kamangar, a Kurdish teacher and social worker, faces imminent execution on a set of trumped up charges. Says EI:

The last time Kamangar was seen, he was at the health clinic of Evin prison and his physical condition was poor. Witnesses testify that he has been beaten again. Kamangar has not been allowed to see his lawyer or family members for the past two months.

You can send a message to President Ahmadinejad demanding clemency here. Beyond that, there’s a crying need to make the regime’s systemic human rights abuse the center of any debate about Iran’s future.

A good place to start might be with this outfit, which passes itself of as a bona-fide media outlet, but is in reality a global propaganda platform for Tehran. Despite its guff about encouraging “human beings of different nationalities, races and creeds to identify with one another,” Press TV is a solid practitioner of the Josef Goebbels school of journalism. It is absurd that its correspondents are credentialed as if they were working for the BBC or CNN.