The foreign ministry of Sweden announced on Sunday that Tehran had summoned the country’s temporary charge d’affaires due to “baseless & spiteful accusations.” This came after Stockholm’s intelligence agency claimed that Iran was “using criminal networks” within Sweden to target Israel and its interests.
The foreign ministry announced on the social media platform X that the assistant of the general directorate for Western Europe had called the Swedish envoy.
On Friday, the Iranian embassy in Stockholm had already refuted claims that Tehran was using members of criminal gangs as go-betweens to carry out “acts of violence” against Swedish interests belonging to Israel.
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 Israel’s 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 of Sweden stated that it “expects the Swedish media not to trust the claims and reports published by the Israeli regime” as well as pursuing “an end to the crimes of the Zionist regime in Palestine.”
Since the Gaza War began on October 7, tensions between Israel and Iran have increased.
