TEHRAN, March 10, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Iran has summoned the Swedish ambassador to protest against "interventionist accusations" made by his country's education minister, the foreign ministry in Tehran announced on Monday.

A ministry statement said it had made a formal protest to criticise "inappropriate statements and unfounded and interventionist accusations of the Swedish minister of education against the Islamic Republic of Iran".

The ministry said it told Ambassador Mathias Otterstedt that the remarks were "contrary to the standards of international law and diplomatic norms".

The spat comes after Swedish Education Minister Johan Pehrson compared Iran to a "rogue state" in an interview with Swedish daily Expressen published in late February.

"Iran is a rogue state from which many Swedes have fled. They have institutionalised misogyny, anti-Semitism and sponsor terrorism," Pehrson was quoted as saying.

Also on Monday, foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei called the Swedish minister's reported remarks "unacceptable and devoid of truth and reality".

The diplomatic summons comes after the Swedish government on Friday asked Tehran to free Ahmadreza Jalali, an Iranian-Swedish academic sentenced to death in 2017 after being charged with espionage.

Sweden called for Jalali's "immediate release on humanitarian grounds so that he can be reunited with his family" and called for his "immediate access to the medical care he so clearly needs".

Jalali, who was granted Swedish nationality while in jail, in mid-January accused Stockholm of not taking sufficient action to obtain his release.

On June 15 last year, Tehran freed two Swedes, Johan Floderus, an EU diplomat who had been held since April 2022, and Saeed Azizi, who was arrested in November 2023, in exchange for Hamid Noury, an Iranian former official serving a life sentence in Sweden.

Iran's judiciary does not recognise dual nationality, so did not refer to the release of the two Swedes as a prisoner swap.