Authorities in the Iranian capital city of Tehran are cracking down on dog owners, with a new ban on dog-walking.

The Tehran police department has recently received approval from state prosecutors to prevent dog owners from walking their pets in public or even transporting them in cars.

According to Tehran police chief Hossein Rahimi, the Tehran Prosecutor’s Office approved a plan to “take measures against people walking dogs in public spaces, such as the park,” the government-run Young Journalists Club reported.

Rahimi declined to specify the punishment for violators, merely saying that “serious police action” would be taken – even for transporting canines in private cars.

“It is forbidden to drive dogs around in cars and, if this is observed, serious police action will be taken against the car owners in question,”

Ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Iranian regime has worked to discourage dog ownership. Over the past two decades, the regime has made “periodic crackdowns” on dog ownership, at times confiscating dogs off the street from their owners, Time Magazine reported

Iran’s ruling religious clerics have repeatedly urged citizens not to keep dogs as pets, calling them impure or unclean according to Islamic tradition.

In 2010, the Iranian ministry of culture instituted a ban on advertisements for pets or pet-related products. Four years later, lawmakers in the Iranian parliament proposed an outright ban on dog ownership, with violations punishable by lashes.