Alireza Akbari: Who was the British-Iranian national executed in Iran?
Iran has executed a British-Iranian national after accusing him of spying for the UK.
Alireza Akbari had worked as Iran‘s deputy defence minister and was arrested in 2019, accused of committing espionage for MI6.
Iranian state media announced he had been put to death by hanging.
Sky News takes a look at the details of Mr Akbari’s life and the accusations made against him.
Government minister under reformist president
Mr Akbari served as Iran’s deputy defence minister when Ali Shamkhani was minister from 1997 to 2005 as part of reformist president Mohammad Khatami’s administration.
He was a close ally of Mr Shamkhani, who is currently the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, since the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
He also served in other security roles, including as an adviser to the Iranian navy, and led the implementation of UN resolution 598, which ended the Iran-Iraq war in 1988.
Mr Akbari had more recently run a private think tank.
Life in Britain and his arrest
Mr Akbari moved to Britain after being briefly detained and released on bail in 2008, according to Iran’s state news agency IRNA.
He was arrested in 2019 and accused of espionage for MI6 concerning past nuclear talks between Iran and western nations, reports said.
Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency claimed Iranian intelligence unmasked him by feeding him false information and described him as “one of the most important infiltrators of the country’s sensitive and strategic centres”.
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Spying accusations
Iranian state media said a video broadcast on Thursday showed Mr Akbari played a key role in the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist in 2020.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in an attack, which authorities blamed on Israel.
In the video, Mr Akbari did not confess to being involved in the assassination, but said a British agent had asked for information about Mr Fakhrizadeh.
Iran’s judiciary claimed Mr Akbari received large sums of money, as well as his British citizenship and other help from London, for providing information to MI6.
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‘Drugged and tortured’: Alleged spy told of ordeal
Torture and false confessions
Mr Akbari denied the charge and claimed he was tortured and given mind-altering drugs and forced to confess to crimes he did not commit.
In an audio recording purportedly made by Mr Akbari and broadcast by BBC Persian, 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 had been put in solitary confinement for 10 months before being moved to Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, where Iran has jailed other dual nationals.
In the recording, Mr Akbari said he had falsely confessed as a result of torture:
He said: “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.
“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.'”
In the message, he also said he was accused of obtaining top-secret information from his former boss, Mr Shamkhani, “in exchange for a bottle of perfume and a shirt”. Mr Shamkhani remains in his role.
‘This will not stand unchallenged’
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said he was “appalled” by the execution, adding: “This was a callous and cowardly act, carried out by a barbaric regime with no respect for the human rights of their own people. My thoughts are with Alireza’s friends and family.”
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said: “Iran has executed a British national.
“This barbaric act deserves condemnation in the strongest possible terms.
“This will not stand unchallenged.”
Elon Musk could be on track for a $1trn pay packet.
Tesla shareholders have approved the whopping financial package for the CEO – who’s already worth an estimated $491bn – if he hits a series of ambitious targets over the next 10 years.
But that $1trn figure (or £761,910,000,000) – which is both one thousand billion and one million million – is almost impossible to imagine for most people.
Even so, we have drilled down into the numbers and examined what you can do with a trillion US dollars – and it turns out, quite a lot.
Show me the money
Laid end to end, a trillion one-dollar bills would cover a distance of approximately 156 billion metres.
That could wrap around the equator 3,890 times, easily reach the sun from Earth (around 149.6 million km) or loop from Earth to the moon 405 times.
That many one-dollar notes could cover a massive area (roughly 10,339 km squared), meaning you could blanket nearly all of Lebanon or Jamaica in bills.
Spend it on sport
You could splash out on virtually all of the world’s major sporting leagues.
The clubs which make up the Premier League are relatively cheap ($30bn), and even when snapping up the UEFA Champions League clubs and the big five top divisions of Spain, Italy, Germany, and France, there’s still $858bn left in the kitty.
The four major US sports leagues for ice hockey, baseball, basketball, and American football (NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL) have a rough valuation of $544bn, according to Sportico.
But then add the IPL cricket league ($120bn) and F1 ($23.1bn) and Musk still has change from an estimated total spend of $829.7bn.
Elon Musk is in the money if he hits targets set by Tesla’s shareholders. File pic: AP
Take over Tesla’s rivals
He could buy up the top 15 largest publicly traded automakers (excluding Tesla) by market capitalisation.
They would include firms like Japan’s Toyota ($275bn), Chinese automaker BYD ($120bn), and luxury brands like Ferrari ($81bn) and Mercedes-Benz ($62bn), as well as BMW ($52bn), Volkswagen ($50bn) and Ford ($48bn).
But there would still be a little change left over; the total bill would be an eye-watering $992bn.
Buy up San Diego
He could buy up every single residential property in San Diego County – valued at a total of $1trn. Seattle is just slightly out of reach at $1.1trn, according to recent data from real estate firm Zillow.
But if he wanted to buy big – there is always Tennessee. The total value of homes in the US state is estimated at $957bn. Or there is Maryland, which at $1.01trn could be bought if he can find a little more cash behind the sofa.
Sadly, he would struggle to scoop up London’s entire housing stock, which in February was valued at just under £2trn ($2.53trn), according to agents Savills.
Cities like New York ($4.6trn) and Los Angeles ($3.9trn) are also not within his budget, hosting America’s most expensive residential markets.
Do something charitable?
There is always the possibility Musk could follow in the footsteps of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who intends to give away 99% of his vast fortune over the next 20 years.
He could give every single man, woman, and child in the US a share of his cash pile. They would receive approximately $2,917.32 (£2,223.29), based on a population estimate of 342.7 million.
Although it would be roughly $14,348.79 (£10,935.20) for every person (roughly 69.6 million) in the UK.
If he wanted to give the entire globe an early Christmas present, then based on the rough world population estimate of 8.2 billion, everyone would receive $121.80 (£92.87).
Pay off the credit card
With $1trn, he could instantly rewrite history and erase debt interest payments and the government debt from dozens of the world’s sovereign nations.
Or Musk could wipe out the debts of Singapore ($1trn) or South Korea ($0.99trn) in one go, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund’s latest World Economic Outlook (Oct 2025).
But when it comes to the biggest debt-laden countries, $1trn would not even touch the sides.
The US has $38.3trn of government debt (just over one third of the total global debt pile) while the UK has a modest $4.1trn.
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