'These claims poison relations': Iran rejects Sweden hacker attack accusations as 'baseless'

Iran on Tuesday rejected as “baseless” Swedish accusations that it was behind a 2023 hacking attack to send messages encouraging people to take revenge on protesters who burned the Quran.

“The Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Stockholm considers the accusations… to be baseless and rejects them,” AFP quoted Iran’s Tasnim news agency as reporting.

“The embassy believes that making these claims and publishing them in the media poison and affect the atmosphere of relations between the two countries,” it added.

Earlier in the day, Swedish authorities had accused Iran of hacking into a text messaging service last year through which it sent thousands of messages urging Swedes to take revenge against Quran burners.

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In 2023, individuals in Sweden on several occasions set fire to Islam’s holy book in public, prompting outrage in the Muslim world and raising fears of attacks by jihadists.

“The security police are able to establish that a cyber group acted on behalf of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to carry out an influence campaign,” Reuters quoted the Swedish Security Service as saying in a statement.

“The purpose was, among other things, to paint the image of Sweden as an Islamophobic country and create division in society,” it said.

Sweden last year raised its terrorism alert following the Quran burnings.

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“That a state actor, in this case Iran, according to the security police’s assessment, is behind an act that aims to destabilise Sweden or increase polarisation in our country is of course very serious,” Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer told Reuters.

In a separate statement, the Swedish Prosecution Authority said the investigation showed it was Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that carried out the data breach.

It said it had identified the individual hackers carrying out the breach but would not press charges because it was unlikely to achieve a prosecution abroad or extradition of individuals to Sweden.

Swedish prosecutors said in August they would put two men on trial for setting fire to the Koran in a series of incidents last year that prompted outrage in the Muslim world and raised fears of retaliatory attacks by jihadists.

With inputs from agencies