"The death sentence for Adnan Hassanpour has been confirmed by the supreme court," the ISNA news agency quoted counsel Saleh Nikbakht as saying.

Hassanpour was convicted of "espionage, giving the specifications of military sites ... and contacting an individual in the US State Department."

He received the death penalty on the basis that the charges amounted to the capital offence of Mohareb or "being an enemy of God", an interpretation the defence lawyer challenged.

"These accusations, supposedly true, are not examples of Mohareb," he said, vowing to continue his fight to spare his client the gallows.

Nikbakht said that death sentence handed down against a second Kurdish journalist had been quashed by the supreme court and the case referred back to the revolutionary tribunal in Marivan, in Iran's northwestern Kordestan province.

"The death sentence of Hiva Botimar has been annulled and his case has been sent back," the lawyer said.

The court delivered the death sentences on July 16 in a case that has drawn condemnation in Europe and raised the concern of press and human rights watchdogs.

The Iranian judiciary has said the pair were prosecuted not for their work as journalists but for taking up arms against Iran's Islamic system.

"None of his (Hassanpour's) actions constituted effective activism on behalf of groups opposed to the Islamic republic," Nikbakht said.

According to Reporters Without Borders, the two journalists wrote for the magazine Aso (Horizons) before it was banned in August 2005.