“Whenever we encounter blocks in our services we try to resolve them as quickly as possible because we strongly believe that people everywhere should have the ability to communicate freely online,” Google said in its statement about Iran. “Sadly, sometimes it is not within our control.”

According to Cecilia Kang of the Washington Post’s Tech Blog, Ryan Flinn of Bloomberg in Business Week, and in the LA Times, Google has reported that e-mail traffic is down in Iran, after an Iranian government announcement that it would suspend Google and force citizens to use a government e-mail service.

Google said it has seen a sharp drop in traffic among Iranian users of Gmail, and confirmed that users there say they are having trouble accessing their e-mail accounts.

The company’s statement comes after a report by Christopher Rhoads, Chip Cummins, and Jessica Vascellaro in The Wall Street Journal that the Iranian government said it put a “permanent suspension of Google’s email services.”

The nation’s telecommunications agency said that instead, it would soon roll out its own e-mail service for Iranian citizens, accoridng to the Journal. Iranian leaders have issued stern warnings to citizens against participating in protests Thursday, the day marking the establishment of the Islamic Republic there.

Google drew international attention earlier this year when it announced that it may withdraw from China because of that nation’s censorship practices. The State Department has supported the company’s move and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton included the firm’s experiences in China among the reasons to push for Internet freedom as part of the U.S. government’s diplomatic agenda.

Google says email traffic down in Iran