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Alireza Akbari: The British-Iranian Executed by Tehran 

Alireza Akbari, Iran's former deputy defense minister, speaks during an interview with Khabaronline in Tehran, Iran, in this undated picture obtained on January 12, 2023. (Khabaronline/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters
Alireza Akbari, Iran's former deputy defense minister, speaks during an interview with Khabaronline in Tehran, Iran, in this undated picture obtained on January 12, 2023. (Khabaronline/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters
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Alireza Akbari: The British-Iranian Executed by Tehran 

Alireza Akbari, Iran's former deputy defense minister, speaks during an interview with Khabaronline in Tehran, Iran, in this undated picture obtained on January 12, 2023. (Khabaronline/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters
Alireza Akbari, Iran's former deputy defense minister, speaks during an interview with Khabaronline in Tehran, Iran, in this undated picture obtained on January 12, 2023. (Khabaronline/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters

Iran has executed British-Iranian national Alireza Akbari, the judiciary's Mizan news agency reported on Saturday, after sentencing the former Iranian deputy defense minister to death on charges of spying for Britain. 

Here are some details about Akbari and his case: 

- He served as deputy defense minister when Ali Shamkhani was minister from 1997 to 2005, part of the administration of reformist President Mohammad Khatami. He had been a close ally of Shamkhani - currently the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council - since the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. 

- He served in other security roles including as an advisor to the Iranian navy, and led the implementation of UN resolution 598 that ended the Iran-Iraq war in 1988. 

- According to a caption in a video aired by Iran's state news agency IRNA on Thursday, Akbari moved to Britain after being briefly detained and released on bail in 2008. Reuters could not verify if Akbari had moved to Britain in 2008, or when he returned to Iran. 

- He was arrested in 2019. In an audio recording purportedly from Akbari and broadcast by BBC Persian on Jan. 11, he said he had returned to Tehran following an invitation by a senior Iranian diplomat involved in Tehran's nuclear talks with world powers. 

His wife, Maryam Samadi, told BBC Persian he was put in solitary confinement for 10 months, before being moved to Tehran's Evin prison, where Iran has incarcerated other dual nationals. 

- In the audio recording, Akbari said he had made false confessions as a result of torture. "With more than 3,500 hours of torture, psychedelic drugs, and physiological and psychological pressure methods, they took away my will. They drove me to the brink of madness...and forced me to make false confessions by force of arms and death threats," he said. 

"They would tell me: 'If you resist, we will send you to the dark cells of Evin prison where you'll face an interrogator with a whip.'" 

- Iranian state media broadcast a video on Thursday that they said showed that Akbari played a role in the 2020 assassination of Iran's top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, killed in a 2020 attack outside Tehran which authorities blamed at the time on Israel. In the video, Akbari did not confess to involvement in the assassination, but said a British agent had asked for information about Fakhrizadeh. 

- Britain has described the death sentence as politically motivated and had called for his immediate release. 

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On Lebanon Border, Israel and Hezbollah’s Deadly Game of Patience

Smoke is seen as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is intercepted following its launch from Lebanon, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, at Kibbutz Eilon in northern Israel, July 23, 2024. (Reuters)
Smoke is seen as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is intercepted following its launch from Lebanon, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, at Kibbutz Eilon in northern Israel, July 23, 2024. (Reuters)
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On Lebanon Border, Israel and Hezbollah’s Deadly Game of Patience

Smoke is seen as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is intercepted following its launch from Lebanon, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, at Kibbutz Eilon in northern Israel, July 23, 2024. (Reuters)
Smoke is seen as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is intercepted following its launch from Lebanon, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, at Kibbutz Eilon in northern Israel, July 23, 2024. (Reuters)

In deserted villages and communities near the southern Lebanon border, Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters have watched each other for months, shifting and adapting in a battle for the upper hand while they wait to see if a full scale war will come.

Ever since the start of the Gaza war last October, the two sides have exchanged daily barrages of rockets, artillery, missile fire and air strikes in a standoff that has just stopped short of full-scale war.

Tens of thousands have been evacuated from both sides of the border, and hopes that children may be able to return for the start of the new school year in September appear to have been dashed following an announcement by Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch on Tuesday that conditions would not allow it.

"The war is almost the same for the past nine months," Lieutenant Colonel Dotan, an Israeli officer, who could only be identified by his first name. "We have good days of hitting Hezbollah and bad days where they hit us. It's almost the same, all year, all the nine months."

As the summer approaches its peak, the smoke trails of drones and rockets in the sky have become a daily sight, with missiles regularly setting off brush fires in the thickly wooded hills along the border.

Israeli strikes have killed nearly 350 Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and more than 100 civilians, including medics, children and journalists, while 10 Israeli civilians, a foreign agricultural worker and 20 Israeli soldiers have been killed.

Even so, as the cross border firing has continued, Israeli forces have been training for a possible offensive in Lebanon which would dramatically increase the risk of a wider regional war, potentially involving Iran and the United States.

That risk was underlined at the weekend when the Yemen-based Houthis, a militia which like Hezbollah is backed by Iran, sent a drone to Tel Aviv where it caused a blast that killed a man and prompted Israel to launch a retaliatory raid the next day.

Standing in his home kibbutz of Eilon, where only about 150 farmers and security guards remain from a normal population of 1,100, Lt. Colonet Dotan said the two sides have been testing each other for months, in a constantly evolving tactical battle.

"This war taught us patience," said Dotan. "In the Middle East, you need patience."

He said Israeli troops had seen an increasing use of Iranian drones, of a type frequently seen in Ukraine, as well as Russian-made Kornet anti tank missiles which were increasingly targeting houses as Israeli tank forces adapted their own tactics in response.

"Hezbollah is a fast-learning organization and they understood that UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) are the next big thing and so they went and bought and got trained in UAVs," he said.

Israel had responded by adapting its Iron Dome air defense system and focusing its own operations on weakening Hezbollah's organizational structure by attacking its experienced commanders, such as Ali Jaafar Maatuk, a field commander in the elite Radwan forces unit who was killed last week.

"So that's another weak point we found. We target them and we look for them on a daily basis," he said.

Even so, as the months have passed, the wait has not been easy for Israeli troops brought up in a doctrine of maneuver and rapid offensive operations.

"When you're on defense, you can't defeat the enemy. We understand that, we have no expectations," he said, "So we have to wait. It's a patience game."