TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's foreign ministry said it summoned the Swiss ambassador on Thursday over "baseless" US allegations that Tehran has taken actions to influence public opinion ahead of the US presidential election.
US authorities "have put forward a baseless claim on the verge of the country's election so that they would advance their undemocratic and predefined scenario through shifting the blame," ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in a statement.
He called the accusations "fabricated and clumsy" and restated Iran's position that it favours no specific candidate in the 2020 election.
"It is not a far-fetched assumption that the designers of such childish scenarios seek to distract public opinion and cause suspicious provocations in the run-up to the election."
The Swiss embassy in Tehran has handled US interests in Iran, since ties were cut in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The United States on Wednesday accused Iran of sending "spoofed" emails to Americans "designed to intimidate voters, incite social unrest, and damage President Trump".
According to the US Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, Iran had also distributed a video that implies that people could send in fraudulent ballots, including from outside the United States.
Khatibzadeh urged Washington to "cease the pointless blame projection, baseless accusations and fabrication of suspicious scenarios and try to act like a normal country."
Tensions between the the two governments have risen sharply since 2018, when Trump unilaterally pulled the US out of a landmark nuclear agreement with Iran and reimposed crippling sanctions.
Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Alireza Miryousefi, called the allegations "another scenario to undermine voter confidence" in the US.
He urged the US to "end its malign and dangerous accusations against Iran," noting that the world had seen Washington's "own desperate public attempts to question the outcome of its own elections at the highest level".
