Iran has summoned Sweden’s ambassador to Tehran after the Swedish minister of education made “inflammatory and unsubstantiated” remarks about the Islamic Republic.

On Monday, Mattias Otterstedt was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, where Shahram Qazizadeh, head of the ministry’s Third Department for Western Europe, formally notified the diplomat about Tehran’s strong protest at the statements made by Johan Pehrson, who called the country a “rogue state” and a “sponsor of terrorism.”

Qazizadeh rejected Pehrson’s remarks as “unfounded, interventionist, and contrary to international norms.”

He also criticized the Swedish government for chiming in with baseless accusations and hostile rhetoric against the Islamic Republic, and warned that such statements only served to undermine relations between the two countries.

The summoning came after Pehrson in remarks to Swedish daily Expressen claimed “Iran is a rogue state that many Swedes have fled from. They have institutionalized misogyny, anti-Semitism, and sponsor terrorism.”

He made the comments after Expressen alleged that an Iranian student at Sweden’s Lund University had previously worked for Iran’s intelligence services.

Iran has firmly rejected the allegations, calling them part of a broader Western campaign to portray the country in a bad light and restrict scientific and academic exchanges.

Qazizadeh also condemned Sweden’s recent summoning of Iran’s ambassador to Stockholm as Swedish authorities demanded immediate release of Ahmadreza Jalali.

The Iran-born resident of Sweden has been convicted and imprisoned in the Islamic Republic for espionage for the Israeli regime’s spy agency Mossad in a development that led to assassination of two Iranian nuclear scientists.

Qazizadeh stressed that Sweden had no right to question the actions of Iran’s sovereign institutions, namely the ones that acted against Jalali.

“The Swedish government is in no position to cast doubt on the legal decisions of another country or to defend individuals whose crimes have been legally established,” he asserted.

It was not the first time Tehran summoned Sweden’s envoy.

Back in 2023, the Islamic Republic asked the ambassador to attend the Foreign Ministry on two occasions over Sweden’s providing safe haven to anti-Iran terrorist groups and allowing the desecration of the Holy Qur’an.