Always striving against China to be in the vanguard of online repression, Iran has banned the popular social network, according to Hamsa via Mideast Youth.

Facebook is the latest social media casualty in Iran, along with Flickr, YouTube and a number of blogging platforms.

Hamsa points out there is, ironically, a Facebook group devoted to ending censorship in Iran.

Update: Esra’a from Mideast Youth writes us:

Certain bloggers in Iran say they can access Facebook just fine. We re getting conflicting reports it seems. Some say it’s just certain
ISPs who did it which makes it unofficial, some say Facebook is loading too slow which might be “intentional,” and others say Facebook is as “fine as ever.” MySpace and YouTube are the ones with official bans, apparently, as well as many personal blogs.

We’ll keep trying to get additional information.

Update: Ammar from the Tharwa Foundation and Hamsa wrote.

We are facing the same situation in Syria with regard to YouTube in particular, as a result of an intentional and declared policy. Knowing the nature of relations between the two regimes in Syria and Iran at this stage, I’d suspect some cooperation between the two regimes (on this). But due to the complexity of the Iranian system, the attempt at blocking access to this site may not be as easily to coordinate and enforce at it is in Syria. This might explain the conflicting reports that one gets from Iran.