Iran's foreign ministry said on Monday it had summoned the French ambassador to Tehran to protest the conduct of two diplomats who were briefly detained earlier this month.

Axar.az reports, citing France 24, "Yesterday, the French ambassador in Tehran was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where it was stressed that the French government must cease such actions and such interference in Iran's internal affairs under misleading labels," said the ministry's spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei in a weekly press briefing.

He said the diplomats had "interfered in Iran's internal affairs under the pretext of engaging with civil society".

Their actions, Baghaei said, were "in no way justified under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations".

On July 20, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said two French diplomats in Iran were targeted by Iranian officials the day before and suffered "an extremely serious act of intimidation" by the Islamic republic's security services.

Both were "detained for several hours without reason, interrogated, and one of them was physically abused" before they were able to return to the embassy, he said.