Iran expelled a Swedish diplomat in Tehran after Sweden had taken a similar action, the Swedish Foreign Ministry confirmed here Thursday.
The Swedish diplomat took up what was to be a two-year posting in September, only to be hastily forced out of Iran at the end of February, the Swedish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Gufran Al-Nadaf told local media.
But she refused to give details and said she had no information as to why.
Earlier in the year, Sweden quietly ejected an Iranian diplomat, setting the stage for a response from Iran. The spokesperson also refused to go into details.
"A likely explanation is that it was related to spying on refugees and the expulsion of the Swedish diplomat is likely retaliation from the Iranian side," Said Mahmoudi, a human rights and Iran expert based at Stockholm University, told the Swedish newspaper Expressen.
Recently, the bilateral relations between Sweden and Iran have been strained since Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt criticized Iranian authorities for violating human rights and restricting freedom of expression.
Source:Xinhua
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