Sweden Says Iran Was Behind Thousands Of Sms To Swedes Calling For Revenge Over 2023 Quran Burnings

Swedish authorities accused Iran on Tuesday of being behind thousands of text messages that were sent to people in the Scandinavian country calling for revenge over the burnings of Quran, Islam's holy book in 2023 .

Officials in Stockholm claimed that Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard carried out "a data breach" and managed to send 'some 15,000 text messages in Swedish" over the string of public burnings of the Quran.

Senior prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said that a preliminary investigation, carried out by Sweden's SAPO domestic security agency, showed that "it was the Iranian state via the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC, that carried out a data breach at a Swedish company that runs a major SMS service."

The Swedish company was not named. There was no immediate comment from Iranian authorities on the accusations from Sweden.

In August 2023, Swedish media reported that a large number of people in Sweden had received text messages in Swedish calling for revenge against people who were burning the Quran, Ljungqvist said, adding that the sender of the messages was "a group calling itself the Anzu team."