Tehran has summoned Sweden’s temporary charge d’affaires over “baseless & spiteful accusations”, the foreign ministry said, after Stockholm’s intelligence agency said Iran was “using criminal networks” inside the Scandinavian country to attack Israel and its interests.

According to AFP, 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.

Sweden’s intelligence agency, commonly known as Sapo, 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”

“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.”