TEHRAN; Iran has banned its citizens from having contact with 60 organisations, including the BBC, Human Rights Watch and opposition

website Rahesabz as well as US-funded broadcasters, state media have reported.

The deputy intelligence minister in charge of external affairs said the 60 blacklisted 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 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.

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.

Other blacklisted groups included the Brookings Institution, US philanthropist George Soros’s Open Society Institute and the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy.

On Monday, Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi said that Iran had arrested several foreign nationals at anti-government protests during Shiite Muslim Ashura rituals last month that left at least eight people dead.