Iran has sentenced three people to death over the 2020 assassination of one of the country's top nuclear scientists, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the judiciary said on Tuesday.

Fakhrizadeh was killed when his car was ambushed on a highway outside the capital in November 2020, in an attack Iran blamed on its sworn enemy Israel.

In December 2022, then judiciary spokesman Massoud Setayeshi said nine people had been charged with the capital offence of “corruption on earth” for their suspected collusion with Israel in the assassination.

Fakhrizadeh had been under US sanctions for his role in Iran’s nuclear programme when he was killed. Iranian authorities said the attackers used a bomb and a remote-controlled machine gun. Israel has never commented on the killing.