The Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) reported that access to many sites was blocked or slowed down starting last Wednesday, January 26. It said access to sites like Google, Yahoo News and gmail was not possible or extremely difficult because of very show speeds.
It said users reported that even when the home page for such sites was reached, the website was substantively unusable because the time to go to a second or succeeding pages was so long.
The Egyptian government has also blocked Google and Yahoo News since the anti-regime street protests erupted in Cairo last month. That has prompted speculation that the Iranian government fears a renewal of anti-government protests sparked by what has happened in Egypt and Tunisia and is acting preventively in an effort to spike any copycat protests in Tehran.