Euro Times / Stockholm – Sweden has expelled an Iranian official after the government said the individual had engaged in activities incompatible with the Vienna Convention.
Sweden’s Foreign Ministry has also summoned Iran’s ambassador in Stockholm. The government has not disclosed the official’s identity or provided details about the activities behind the decision.
The decision comes against a broader backdrop of Swedish concern over Iranian security-threatening activity. The Swedish Security Service (Säpo) has established that the Iranian regime uses criminal networks in Sweden as proxies to carry out acts of violence against individuals, groups and other states’ interests that Tehran regards as threats. Säpo has also said that several concrete attack plots linked to Iranian security services have been thwarted in Sweden.
According to Säpo, Iranian security-threatening activity has historically focused mainly on dissidents and members of the Iranian diaspora, while Israeli and Jewish interests have also been targeted. In May 2026, SVT reported that internationally wanted Dante Peykar was suspected of conveying pressure from the Iranian regime to the Swedish criminal network Rumba. According to SVT’s reporting, the alleged assignments included attacks on exiled Iranian journalists and targets connected to Israel. Peykar has also been linked by investigators to the commissioning of an attempted murder of Iran analyst Arvin Khoshnood. In that case, prosecutors have stressed that the ultimate person or entity behind the assignment has not been established.
The Swedish Security Service has also previously attributed a cyber-enabled influence campaign in Sweden to a group acting on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The Swedish government has not, however, said that the Iranian official now being expelled is directly connected to any of these cases. The information provides the wider security context and should not be read as establishing the reason for this specific expulsion.
Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard told SVT News that Sweden had decided to expel the individual and had summoned the Iranian ambassador over the case.
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