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ShareIran on Tuesday banned an influential conservative news website for acting against the constitution and spreading disunity, the state-run IRNA agency reported.
"The press office of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance announced the banning of the activities of the Baztab (Reflection) website," the agency said.
The statement said the website, which has been linked to the former commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards Mohsen Rezai, acted against the constitution by seeking to disrupt national unity and spread lies.
"Considering the large amount of such material (on the website), it was recognised as an illegitimate Internet site and its continued activity is illegal and banned," it said.
No further explanation was given.
However, Culture Minister Mohammad Hossein Saffar Harandi said on Monday that "a committee will soon decide on the activities of some sites and news websites that work under the name of a news agency", according to IRNA.
In recent weeks, Baztab has published articles criticising the economic policies of the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and also its decision to hold a conference questioning the veracity of the Holocaust.
The website had also been critical of the previous government of president Mohammad Khatami for being too soft in Iran's nuclear standoff with the West.
It was temporarily closed down in October 2005 by the judiciary but reopened and was one of Iran's most widely read news sites.
Baztab published a statement on its website quoting an unnamed legal representative as saying the directive was "illegal" and the site would seek to press charges against the culture ministry.
"The committee (monitoring websites) is illegal, not credible and its decisions are illegitimate," it added.
The statement on IRNA did not give any details on when the ban would be imposed and Baztab's Farsi language and new English language sites were working as normal on Tuesday afternoon.
Iran's hardline judiciary has shut down dozens of publications and websites in recent years after the press enjoyed a brief flowering under the reformist president Khatami.
Last year, the standard bearer newspaper of moderates, Shargh, was shut down for printing a cartoon deemed offensive to the president and then its successor daily Rozegar was closed for overly resembling Shargh.
However the conservative press has also been targeted: the government daily Iran was shut down last year for offending Iran's Azeri community in a cartoon and has only just reopened.
This month, the ultra-conservative daily Siasat Rouz (Today Politics) was temporarily suspended by the press watchdog for publishing "insulting material" against Sunni Muslims.
