Kuwait summons Iran's ambassador after Tehran's statement regarding death sentences for "espionage"

On Wednesday, the Kuwaiti Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Iranian Ambassador, Muhammad Totunji, to protest an Iranian statement regarding the Kuwaiti judiciary’s rulings against 3 people on charges of spying with Iran and planning to carry out assassinations. The Ministry issued a statement in which it indicated that the Iranian ambassador to Kuwait had been handed “a memorandum of protest against the statement issued by the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the State of Kuwait on October 28, 2026, and the blatant interference it contained in the internal affairs of the State of Kuwait, and an attack on its sovereignty and the independence of its judicial authority, in clear violation of international laws and norms.”

In the statement, Deputy Foreign Minister Hamad Suleiman Al-Mashaan reiterated Kuwait’s “strong rejection and denunciation of any interference in judicial rulings issued by its national courts,” stressing “the need for the Iranian side to adhere to the provisions of international law and the United Nations Charter, especially the principles of good neighborliness and non-interference in the internal affairs of states, as well as the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961.” On Monday, the State Security and Terrorist Crimes Department at the Criminal Court in Kuwait sentenced three people, including an Iranian national, to death, after trying them on charges related to joining the Hezbollah terrorist organization, harming the country’s national interests, spying with Iran, and planning to assassinate the First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, Sheikh Fahd Al-Yousef.

For its part, the Iranian embassy in Kuwait issued a statement on Tuesday in which it declared its “categorical rejection of the Kuwaiti government’s allegations regarding the involvement of an Iranian citizen in a plot to assassinate figures or in any move targeting Kuwaiti national security,” stressing that the aforementioned Iranian citizen “was not present in Kuwait at all during the past ten years.” According to the Iranian Tasnim Agency, the embassy expressed “its deep regret over the continued negative attitudes towards Iran, which is manifested in the repetition of exhausted and fabricated scenarios regarding Iran’s interference in Kuwaiti affairs.”