I'm John Batchler. I welcome my good colleague Jonathan Saya of the Foundation for

Defensive Democracy.

Who knows Tehran well? He was born there. He lived there. But now we're looking at Tehran from the outside.

And the horror is everywhere, but we have to look closely.

Jonathan, a very good evening to you. There is a report, and you've written up at FDD's website.

Many reports you've written up, but this one.

Iranian prosecutor denies U.S. claim to have prevented 800 hangings.

That's Muhammad Mova Hedy.

He's denying what President Trump and the administration are saying that the U.S.

looking in on the massacre and saying, if you continue the executions, we're going to strike.

Stop the execution of 800 people. First of all, is that number credible? Where are the 800 now if that number is credible?

And what about executions? Is Iran executing anyone anywhere? Good evening to you.

Good evening to you. To answer a latter, absolutely, they are currently executing people.

That said, these are individuals that were arrested

prior to the recent unwaives, but nonetheless, we're seeing executions for political crimes.

So they actually executed a person that was, quote, unquote, I guess, accused of having killed

the security official. I think it was last year, if I'm not mistaken.

So the executions are going on. As to the number of 800, Iranian media never put out that

numbers. That was realistically something that was communicated to the administration from Tehran

using backchannel networks. I think that was their way of signaling to America that, hey, you know what,

we had 800. And just because of your threats, we're going to scale that back. It was meant as a measure

to deter a potential attack from the United States. But that said, anything on the ground that we see

...