It is odd for the US defense secretary to be laying the groundwork for an event that could be organized by Tehran

Pete Hegseth’s plans to stage a public execution resemble a grotesque Iran-imitation game.

Having failed over the past seven months to defeat the Tehran regime on the battlefield, the self-styled “secretary of war” now proposes to mirror its notorious practice of enforcing the death penalty as a grand public spectacle.

Warning follows Pete Hegseth announcement that firing squad execution of Fort Hood killer will be public

• US politics – latest updates

Livestreaming an execution could cause post-traumatic stress disorder in the viewing public, mental health experts have said, after the US confirmed plans to broadcast the death by firing squad of a man who shot dead 13 unarmed soldiers.

The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said on Thursday that Nidal Hasan, a former army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, would be executed by firing squad on 3 December. Officials later confirmed it would be livestreamed. It is believed it will be the first public execution in the US in almost a century.