Iran has banned its citizens from communicating with 60 foreign organisations it says are trying to topple the Islamic regime, state media has reported.
The BBC, Human Rights Watch, opposition website Rahesabz and US-funded broadcasters are among Iran's 60 blacklisted groups.
The deputy intelligence minister in charge of external affairs said that the groups were suspected of being involved in efforts by Western governments to topple the Islamic regime as part of a 'soft war' and that it was an offence to communicate with them.
'Any kind of contact by individuals or legal entities with those groups involved in the soft war is illegal and prohibited,' state media quoted the deputy minister as saying on Monday without giving his name.
The deputy minister also called on the public to avoid 'irregular contacts with embassies or foreign nationals or centres linked to them'.
'Citizens should be alert to the traps of the enemies and cooperate with the intelligence ministry in protecting the nation and neutralising the plots of foreigners and the conspirators,' he said in allusion to opposition sympathisers who have held repeated protests over the past seven months.
The blacklisted organisations also included US government-funded Voice of America and Radio Farda, as well as US-based pro-monarchist satellite channels, Israeli public radio and the outlawed rebel People's Mujahedeen.
Other blacklisted groups included the Brookings Institution, US philanthropist George Soros' Open Society Institute and the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy.
Yesterday, Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi said that Iran had arrested several foreign nationals at anti-government protests during Shia Muslim Ashura rituals last month that left at least eight people dead.
'They had entered Iran only two days before Ashura. Their cameras and equipment have been seized,' he added, without specifying how many had been arrested or their nationalities.
In late November, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran was in the throes of a 'soft war' with its enemies abroad, who were fomenting the street protests that have hit the country since hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed June re-election.
