Ali Reza Akbari speaks during an interview with Khabaronline in Tehran, Iran. File/Reuters

Britain on Saturday described the execution by Iran of British-Iranian national Ali Reza Akbari as barbaric and said it would not go unpunished.

"I am appalled by the execution of British-Iranian citizen Ali Reza Akbari in Iran," Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Twitter. "This was a callous and cowardly act, carried out by a barbaric regime with no respect for the human rights of their own people."

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaks during a session. File photo

Iran said on Saturday it had executed a dual Iranian-British national who once worked for its defence ministry, despite an international outcry over his death sentence and those of others held amid nationwide protests.

Iran’s Mizan news agency, associated with the country’s judiciary, announced Ali Reza Akbari’s hanging.

It did not say when it happened. However, there were rumours he had been executed days ago.

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Iran had accused Akbari, without offering evidence, of being a spy for Britain’s MI-6 intelligence agency. It aired a highly edited video of Akbari discussing the allegations resembling others that activists have described as coerced confessions.

On Friday, State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel criticised Akbari’s pending execution.

"The charges against Ali Reza Akbari and his sentencing to execution were politically motivated. His execution would be unconscionable," she said. "We are greatly disturbed by the reports that Mr. Akbari was drugged, tortured while in custody, interrogated for thousands of hours, and forced to make false confessions.”

She added: "More broadly, Iran’s practices of arbitrary and unjust detentions, forced confessions, and politically motivated executions are completely unacceptable and must end.”