Iran will delay sending a new ambassador to Sweden in protest at the burning of a copy of the Koran outside a Stockholm mosque last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said today.

An Iraqi refugee cut pages from the Koran and burned them in front of Stockholm’s central mosque on Wednesday, the first day of the important Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

The man was charged with incitement to hatred.

Iran’s foreign ministry on Thursday summoned the Swedish envoy to condemn the insult to Islam’s holiest symbols.

“Although the administrative procedures to appoint a new ambassador to Sweden have been completed, his mission has been postponed because the Swedish government gave permission (to a protester to) desecrate the holy Koran,” Amirabdolakhian explained on Twitter today.

The Iranian minister did not specify when the new ambassador will be sent to Sweden.

Although Swedish police have in the past rejected requests to hold demonstrations in which the Koran was burned, the judiciary overturned those decisions on the grounds of freedom of speech.

On Wednesday, the police announced that they had allowed this demonstration to take place, considering that “the security risks (…) are not serious enough to be banned”, despite the fact that “it may have implications for foreign policy”.