Tehran summoned Sweden’s temporary charge d’affaires over “baseless & spiteful accusations,” the foreign ministry said Sunday, after Stockholm’s intelligence agency said Iran was “using criminal networks” inside the Scandinavian country to attack Israel and its interests.
The Swedish diplomat was summoned by the assistant of the foreign ministry’s general directorate for Western Europe, the ministry posted on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
Iran’s embassy in Stockholm had already denied accusations Friday that Tehran was recruiting criminal gang members as proxies to commit “acts of violence” against Israeli interests in Sweden.
That came in reply to Sweden’s intelligence agency saying the day prior that Iran was “using criminal networks in Sweden to carry out acts of violence against other states, groups or people in Sweden that it considers a threat.”
The service, commonly known as SAPO, said these were particularly aimed at “Israeli and Jewish interests, targets and operations in Sweden.”
Shortly before SAPO’s announcement, Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter cited documents from Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency as saying the heads of two Swedish gangs had been recruited by the Iranian regime.
“Iran has previously used violence in other countries in Europe in a bid to silence critical voices and perceived threats against its regime,” SAPO said.
The diplomatic spat comes two weeks after nighttime gunfire was reported outside the Israel Embassy in Stockholm, and three months after police found a live grenade lying on the grounds of the Israeli compound.
“Sweden will not be a platform where state actors use criminal networks to promote their own interests,” Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said Thursday in remarks emailed to AFP.
The Iranian Embassy on Friday rejected the accusations.
“Unfortunately, some Swedish media have quoted the false and baseless claims of media and institutions affiliated with this brutal regime (Israel) and published false and fabricated reports against the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the embassy said in a statement.
The embassy said it “expects the Swedish media not to trust the claims and reports published by the Israeli regime” and to work for “an end to the crimes of the Zionist regime in Palestine.”
Tensions have flared between Israel and Iran since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7.
