I'll note again the snowball effect that the Google Cloud block has (Google Cloud totally blocks Iran on a network level).
Now, your services that you host on Google Cloud are not available. Say you are Gitlab, and you host there (they do!). Now, if you put your Open Source project on Gitlab, that project is not accessible to Iranians either (as well as other sanctioned countries).
As someone you spends a couple of weeks every year in Iran, I can tell you that arbitrary websites breaking because of blocks on the US side have a far worse effect on my ability to work then the fact that Facebook and Twitter is blocked.
Why doesn't the documentation for date-fns work? Oh, they load the data from Firebase.
Why can't I compile by Android app? Oh, the Android repository is hosted on Google Cloud.
I'm guessing the dev quickly noticed the lack of connectivity and may have tried some obvious things to change his autoreply message, but those things didn't work and he & his company deemed it not worth it to try further.
Google Safety & Security Blog: An update on state-sponsored activity (2018) ...
Detecting and terminating activity on Google properties
"Actors engaged in this type of influence operation violate our policies, and we swiftly remove such content from our services and terminate these actors’ accounts. Additionally, we use a number of robust methods, including IP blocking, to prevent individuals or entities in Iran from opening advertising accounts."
The author of the great app "City Producer" is French, born in Iran. He fled Iran as a child 40 years ago. He was invited to present his app to Tim Cook at Apple's HQ; however as he's born in Iran he can't enter the US, any time, ever. Never mind he and his parents actually fled the regime. Never mind he isn't an Iran passport holder.
This is US foreign policy. Bullish and stupid.
So this isn't really a problem with Apple or Google; it's a problem with the way US enforces sanctions on countries.
Whilst I understand where the author is coming from, I'm not sure the companies are to blame here.
> Two years ago, under the guise of complying with American sanctions against Iran — sanctions that have existed for decades — Apple started removing Iranian apps from its platform.
Sanctions aren't always clear-cut, and if a buck is to be made, companies often try to stretch interpretations, try to fly under the radar or rely on the administration on being lenient in some aspects. So I'm not sure it's as simple as "sanctions existed before, so this must be the companies fault".
I'd much rather see sanctions in this space limited/removed - but I hold no hopes for enabling moves in this geopolitical game of power.
I don't think to blame the companies will have any effect either. We think these companies with their financial and market power can do better here to show that the tech community is not a part of political war.
For example, there can be new companies in third countries with no legal obligation to US sanctions that can provide Apple and Google products to countries like Iran.
The 80 million Iranians are currently held hostage by two entities. First, it is their own government (which is by far not the worst in the world, being in Iran feels more free than one would expect). Second, it is the USA. The US imposed sanctions put real stress on everyday life in Iran, they make transactions complicated to impossible, healthcare unsafe, flights totally unsafe (we had 2 emergencies in the last 12 flights between Iran and Germany) and they currently provoke a big brain drain and probably a new wave of refugees. From what I see the US sanctions are catastrophic for those 80 million people while the government is more or less untouched. For the sake of the family I married into and the genetic relatives of my children: stop that nonsense.
I get it - Sanctions hurt people. They are blunt tools when we need more refined dialogue. It is putting the pain of conflict between our governments onto the people, and not driving change.
All these things are true. But this letter is written to the wrong people. This situation stems from a problem between our governments, and that is where it needs to be fixed. We have limited power to change this, but what power we do have is enacted by electing leaders who will work for a better solution. We get a chance to pick a US President again in just over a year.
Please, when the opportunities arise over the next 18 months, get out, get involved, and vote.
Meanwhile companies are hijacking governments by pouring billions of dollars directly or indirectly in order to push policies that benefit their profit-driven agenda.
Big companies and governments go hand in hand, so the only way to enact some REAL change is to strike where the MONEY is and cut their economic power.
A vote becomes worthless in a society where lobbying is legalized and media channels have economic interests in play.
pnongrata is arguing that voting is worthless. I'm honestly trying to understand their position, but so far having no success. Seems to me that we absolutely should be electing leaders with political positions that match what we desire to see in our society.
I have to ask: why not find an Emirati friend you trust and have them be the owners of the business and you an employee? It sounds like it would be less costly.
I had that Emirati friend to employ me on several companies of his and employment permit/visa was getting rejected or being "under processing" for +1 years. I've applied in Dubai, Ajman and Sharjah. All with the same result.
Trade sanction seem counterproductive to me, they breed resentment in a generation of young people, they breed poverty and that ultimately is what breeds extremism and fundamentalism.
Shouldn't trade sanctions be more fine grained? Having part of the population be part of the global economy seems like the best way to eventually push for change in those countries...
The goal was never to end extremism or fundamentalism. Conflict is very very profitable to all sides except the common person. I guarantee that a lot of elite Iranians prefer war and conflict over peace, just like the US.
This is a touchy subject because it gets into the realm of the people are not the regime. Its terrible that everyone gets wrapped up in international conflicts, but I always have to ask what is an alternative plan? In the case with China, no amount of diplomacy would have worked to get them to renegotiate on trade. I'm not sure about other posters on HN, but I know I personally am strongly for stopping nuclear proliferation around the world and it doesn't end with Iran. I want to see India and Pakistan give up their weapons because the doomsday clock there always seems its a minute to midnight. Its a tough, controversial subject and I feel for innocent people caught in the crosshairs.
Then you should know that the people who wanted the US to drop the Non-Proliferation deal with Iran known as the JCPOA did so because they are willing to put geopolitical considerations, specifically alignment with Israel and Saudi Arabia, before proliferation concerns. To put it another way, if the had to choose, they would choose a weak isolated Iran with nukes over a strong one that could build nukes but doesn't.
You see that happening right now with Iran ramping up enrichment again, and if they play their cards right, they can absolutely go the North Korea route and get it done.
> I personally am strongly for stopping nuclear proliferation around the world
> I want to see India and Pakistan give up their weapons
Since you are so strongly against nuclear weapons, wouldn't you agree the US should lead by example instead of "do as I say, not as I do" (which is the current policy) and start by giving up its own nukes?
Be the change you want to see in the world and all that.
That's the dream, all we need right now is support from the tech community to come to an agreement for opening new windows for innocent people who have contributed a lot to science, tech, art and culture of the entire world.
They can make a change, a real difference
I sincerely hope that the ongoing trade and business war will lead to nice new competitors to Android and iOS. The more countries they ban the higher the chances.
This is the ironic part right here from a security perspective. If countries with sufficient resources like China or India or Russia would manage to establish a parallel ecosystem every country that even tangentially fears to end up on the USA's bad side has a strong incentive to hop on.
America's companies and government might very well be giving up a very comfortable monopoly in some key sectors right now by encouraging new ecosystems out of necessity.
> America's companies and government might very well be giving up a very comfortable monopoly in some key sectors right now by encouraging new ecosystems out of necessity.
At the same time, they are exploiting the monopoly (the US as a hole, that is). I suppose there's a line between "this is too much pain, I'm jumping ship" and "this is an acceptable amount of pain, I'll just pay my tribute and stay". I don't know whether they've crossed that line - especially when adopting a Chinese system won't really change a lot, it will only change who you depend on and whose wishes you need to comply with.
Maybe i'm bitter, or old, but my exclusion from a service is #1 reason to stay away from patronizing it.
It's my opinion that the excluded, Iranians in the case of this article, should be having hard discussions about how they could get away from the likes of Google and Apple, not talks about how to integrate into an ecosystem that appears hostile.
I understand the difficulty of that in practice, but integrating into a group that makes hostile world-changing decisions about groups of people based on geography and cultural differences seems to just empower that group further the next time they try to inject political maneuvering into their business -- making them an even larger threat to those it disagrees with in the future.
In other words : Second verse, same as the first -- vote with your dollar, vote with your participation.
> Maybe i'm bitter, or old, but my exclusion from a service is #1 reason to stay away from patronizing it.
Sure, sure, but that's often not an option. If you're black and the only grocery store in town has a "no colored people" policy, you're out of luck.
With the internet getting more and more centralized to a few large US corporations, you're in a similar spot. Banned from using their services? There's no alternative, because everybody else relies on them and will have their contracts canceled unless they also not do business with you.
That's another part of the story. That part is going on, struggling with its problems, especially with the Apple ecosystem.
On the other side, there are conservatives in Iran too, that will be happy to be disconnected from the world. Taking effective steps from Google and Apple side can strengthen the peace dialogue for both sides.
There are lots of ways to provide free access to information to everyone. How do you expect other people to grow without giving them enough information to understand?
Peace depends on the freedom
The only major resources which have permanent ban I know of are PornHub and LinkedIn (not including the sites which were blocked during the Hunt for Telegram, 95% of IPs have been removed after the body which operates the blacklist admitted their fail).
> majority of Russians applaud the wars
If you got the data from official Russian survey agencies or government, you can divide it by 0 twice. And don't forget that more than half of the population were born in USSR, a third part had been educated in soviet schools and a sixth part in current propaganda-driven schools (started in 2004) which makes a majority alone.
In which country is that fundamentally different? Perception creates reality, short of traveling everywhere, you'll rely on the media for information. "We're being attacked", "we're on a peace keeping mission", "we're helping oppressed people", "We're fighting terrorists" are messages to get a population to support a war, and you will find a war time press in pretty much any country.
The article mentions the kind of dependency on the Android and iOS platforms. I believe this is the right time for Iranian entrepreneurs to start porting or start installing Google free Android as a service on customers’ phones and then have their apps running on them. Some of the smarter ones can even exploit the political scene and say they’re giving a big middle finger to Western companies in favour of something they built locally. I’m assuming that the local politicians are at best indifferent to these measures.
Please to all the posters, stick your head out of your butt for a sec, this Iran thing is not something related to just some poor dev unable to publish on their store, it is a world wide dumb reaction all started from the USA foreign agenda.
I'll give you an example to highlight how f'd up is the situation, in Italy, country with a quite respectful relation with Iran, banks started kicking out clients (with a one month notice) like my friend just because she was BORN in Teheran grew up in Italy (she's a fucking grown up working as a doctor), with dual italian/iranian citizenship due to the ius sanguinis (iranian mother, italian father) just because of the USA sanctions.
If that's not WRONG, tell me what it is.
"with dual italian/iranian citizenship due to the ius sanguinis (iranian mother, italian father)"
How did she even get Iranian citizenship? Iranian law does not provide citizenship to children of Iranian mothers with foreign fathers even if they are born in Iran, and the Guardian Council has so far vetoed all attempts to change it[0].
Didn't know, thanks, i should ask if I am wrong about her father, though she has italian citizenship and she was born in Teheran, that was the reason for her being kicked out from the bank, that's what i know for sure.
Just to restate, i'm quite sure her mother is iranian and i thought her father is italian because in Italy ius sanguinis law is the rule, so one of the parents should be italian born to get the citizenship from birth, if i mixed up the nationality of both parents is me being dumb, so thanks for pointing that out.
Oh no: I am not staying away from REALITY. This is not a metaphor, this is just plain facts: they are being treated like that exactly because they share a trait at birth. In this case being Iranian. In the past, being Jew.
This is exactly where reality meets history. And not as a metaphor.
Please don't up the flamewar ante like this. It doesn't help—it just destroys the discussion, at which point no information is being exchanged and no minds or hearts will ever change.
When discussing matters of states acting very much in the same vein as Nazi Germany, of course the Reich is going to come up. How can it not? Fuck Godwin's law. If people are acting like Nazis, you call them fucking Nazis. And then you punch them. That's how we make sure those kinds of atrocities never occur again.
Please don't take HN threads further into ideological battle, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. It's not what this site is for—and it destroys what it is for.
As an European I would love to visit Iran. Amazing country, some friends there, direct flights... But I would lose ESTA and would need to apply for a visa before visiting US.
I feel you, this friend of mine had the same thought one year ago, he then decided that it will be ok for him to not visit the US in the next ten years then he went to Iran and had a lovely time there, he was so overwhelmed by the iranians and didn't regret anything.
One of the funniest thing he saw was this kid dancing with a donkey costume and blasting a trumpet (you know the annoying vuvuzela thing) in a mosquee, what a dangerous country.
A fantastic, cheap country where almost everybody speaks OK english, great and amazingly helpful people. And the most important thing - completely unspoiled by mass tourism. You just don't see that in the world where there is actually something to see anymore.
I gained much respect for persians and their history when doing a short trip there (Mont Damavand, Isfahan, Yazd & desert, Tehran).
Losing an ESTA for such an enriching experience? Definitely worth it. Plus when I flew through Miami last year, I had already new passport and all was OK.
A few years back, one of my ex-colleagues who needed to travel to US frequently for work was stopped right before boarding a plane because he had a layover in one of the blacklisted countries while on holiday. He didn't even know he lost his ESTA.
The author left one of the protagonists out of the picture completely. The Iranian regime. If the US and US-based companies have a fault in this, so too does the recalcitrant regime which should be called out for its part in this.
Regardless what you think of the tactics, the sanctions are an economic vise -- a negotiating tactic to leverage a position -- it has nothing to do with race.
A tactic that takes 80 million people as hostages. Just as a side note: you can not give back Iranian citizenship (if that would be possible most Iranians in the West I know would do it). This concept does not exist. So even if you are the most western, fully integrated European which happens to have some Iranian roots you are still treated in a racist way because those new sanctions are so totally all-encompassing that you get fully subjected to it even if no practical connection to Iran exists.
You can totally "accidentally fail to declare" it. That's what I'd do living anywhere in Europe. For the most part, Europe won't put you in prison for ticking the wrong box on a form.
It is an objective fact that this president made the central issue of his campaign portraying two groups - Muslims and Hispanics - as a threat to the United States, and his two key differentiating policies from his peers in the republican primaries reflect that - respectively his "Muslim Ban" and "The Wall".
It is absurd to characterise this president's foreign policy on Iran as separate from that background.
I think you're getting caught up in semantics here. If you want to tie this back to the 'actual racism' you're inferring, the prejudice of the US polity towards the Iran people is what enables this policy to be enacted without any serious counter of moral concern from the populous. This actual racism is what permits the foreign policy, that ruins the lives of innocent people in far off countries. Further to that, if someone is okay with their government using this tactic on the innocent people of one foreign country vs another, you can tease apart their actual racism from nationalism.
Yes, PNAC's plan to dislodge the middle east was formed in the '90's. Their strategy and tactics included a series of kinetic wars that culminated with Syria, which they viewed as the most politically challenging situation. In contrast, Trump's strategy and tactics is based on economic force rather than kinetic wars. For economic force to work, the Iranian people must rise and act. Sanctions put the Iranian government into a weakened position and provide an opportunity for the people to act. The globalists don't believe in this strategy and will likely return to their strategy of kinetic war in the next administration if this doesn't work. The Iranian people are in a strong position to choose to act and prove the globalists wrong and kinetic wars are obsolete.
I think part of the problem is the fact that there's a real phenomenon that's important to talk about and describe, but rather than invent a new term, that the word 'racism' has repurposed to describe it instead.
200 years ago, everyone would have understood "racism" to mean what you have implied it means: conscious individual racial prejudice. And of course, one problem that (say) blacks in the US face is widespread, individual, conscious racial prejudice.
But there's yet another problem blacks face: the mechanisms of society as a whole disproportionately cause problems for black people, even when nobody involved is consciously prejudiced. When this was pointed out, people would respond, "But nobody in this organization is prejudiced". Well, it doesn't matter if the people are prejudiced or not, the emergent property of the system as a whole affects black people as though it was set up by people who are racist; and so the system is called "racist", even if nobody in it is trying to be racist.
I think the argument here is the same: Iranians are facing persecution for no other reason than the country they were born in. It doesn't matter if people making the policies of the US government is prejudiced against Iranians as individuals or not; the net effect is the same.
(FWIW I think the concept of "institutional racism" is useful, but the overloading of the term 'racist' to describe it is counterproductive in the long run.)
Surely the right term for what you describe is “discriminatory”. All forms of undesirable -ism fall within the broader, general purview of “discrimination”.
Perhaps it makes more sense if I phrase it thusly: the consequences of the decision do not depend upon why the decision was taken. It certainly sounds like a discriminatory practice, based on what is indicated. For sure, even if it had a decorous reason behind it, the consequences thereof are no less severe and irksome.
In this case, it seems that the companies are following a reasonable interpretation of the law of the land in which they operate. I don't the vast asymmetry of "break this law, do a [relatively] small amount of good for a [relatively] small number of people, put a substantial amount of the company at risk" makes any kind of logical business sense.
No it's not, Americans have had difficulties getting banking in Germany because banks fear having US customers exposes them to liabilities.
It's all a huge pile of steaming manure, especially that the US considers companies in the US liable for things that their holding or child companies do in other countries - even if the behavior is fully legal in the place where it happens.
And banks and other corporations with even the tiniest amount of US connections are rightfully scared of excessive punishments dealt by the US "judicial" system.
That's because having US citizens as customers requires them to file tax information for those customers with the US government, and the German banks don't want the overhead.
And that's because for some unknown reason the US is one of the few countries that tax based on citizenship, and not residence [1]. It's absurd. Even resigning your citizenship is taxed [2].
As someone who has paid a truckload of these taxes: I don't think it's that absurd. You're not double-taxed. And if you want to relinquish citizenship, you can.
> No it's not, Americans have had difficulties getting banking in Germany because banks fear having US customers exposes them to liabilities.
That's just reaction to stupid US FATCA laws pushed by US down the throat all countries out there. Same is for Switzerland - quite hard to open an account for anybody qualifying as US citizen, although banks are mostly fully compliant with FATCA processes. But this was pushed by the guy before the Big Blonde
Yes, banks are scared of the US. And perhaps the racism stems from the Italian bank, perhaps it stems from the US government, perhaps it stems from the Iranian definition of citizenship, perhaps all share a part of the blame. But regardless of who gets the blame, it most definitely IS straight up racism.
If you're in a place where being woman is disadvantageous, would you call such disadvantage "racist"? Clearly it fits your description. If you think it's wrong, then I agree with you. If you think it's racist, then no way, it isn't and you just don't know the words you use.
Is that the most useful direction you could take this debate? Will changing the word for the same thing change anything? Racist, sexist, nationalist, whatever, people are having their livelihoods broken and you want to debate grammar?
You’re just using a broader abstraction to define the original problem. This usually doesn’t help solving or understanding problems in general (you end up with general statement as « it’s wrong », which frankly doesn’t lead to anything).
As an example, it would be interesting to know if relocating to some other country, or give up your nationality solves the issue. In the case of racism, it wouldn’t for sure. In this case, i don’t know.
> (ii) which he cannot show to be justifiable irrespective of the colour, race, nationality or ethnic or national origins of the person to whom it is applied ; and
See also Article 1 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination:
> In this Convention, the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.
Both "descent" and "national or ethnic origin" appear relevant here.
It is extremely shitty behavior, but not racism. The sanctions are in place because the Iranian government is racist and innocents suffer from that, which could in turn increase racism again.
More specifically discrimination of nationality, but almost the same as discrimination of race in this case. Either way, it's not fair on any of the people affected.
Granted that US and Iran had good relations in the 1970s. And many people exmigrated from Iran after things changed. Those people are also treated the same way.
This get me thinking: are Multinational Companies actually multinational? If their HQ is in one place and they have to operate globally either under jurisdiction or under board pressures of that place, isn't it super dangerous for the people that buy into their "multinational" narrative and place their trust under the assumptions that infrastructure would only seldomly be biased?
Can't really expect the corporate tentacles of the National Security™ apparatus to comply, especially when there's a slew of bright eye'd folks willing to step up to the plate to pay down their student loans by drinking the kool-aid and lube up to jump in bed with such corporates.
Best to hope for in this environment is to expect nation states to waste more and more resources toward such unproductive endeavors and exploit the gaps.
It's not just about the publishers, Apple and Google are being forced to ban any transaction from Iran. Iranian apps cannot be published from any provider around the world on Apple devices. Apple home, Google Chromecast and other appliances don't even work in Iran.
We tried to use Stripe Atlas to open a company in USA because Stripe is not yet available in India. From the start they bombarded us questions like, ‘How will you prevent users from Iran/N.Korea etc from using your product.’ It went on for about 3 months. We gave up and switched to Singapore. Couldn’t have been happier. Singapore is too damn good for business.
I recently got contacted about an old genetics project that stopped working because Java applets. I told them I can reimplement it in JS, just pay for my time. They said they would love to, but they are an Iranian institute, and I'm a US citizen. So it's a lose-lose situation.
There is no reason America shouldn't have an ally, or at least a trading partner, in Iran. The ONLY reason they don't is because of the influence of the lsrael lobby over every level of US foreign policy.
Can someone who is educated on the subject help me understand what the sanctions are about? I've tried Google, but I'm sure HN'ers have a higher IQ/EQ on average than whatever is on the first page of Google results.
Judging from the quality of discourse in this thread, Hackernews are evidently some of the least enlightened people I encounter in a peer-group setting.
My general impression, that I don't know how to back up, is that the last Shah of Iran was overthrown, fled the country and died in exile in part because Iranians viewed him as a puppet of the US. Sanctions against Iran in some form or another go back decades, likely rooted in those events.
I think Iran perceives itself to be fighting for its right to self determination. I don't think this is likely to be resolved without that being understood and addressed.
I never hear anyone addressing that, which may explain why this is such an intractable situation.
Keep in mind that an extraordinary amount of current population of Iran are in their teens or early adulthood. They can only be tampered for so long before they start to fight back (as an example, look up the resistance against hijabs in Iran).
The best thing us outsiders can do to help them out is to provide them with an unlimited access to the information, not the opposite. The amount of young people that are willing to sacrifice their own chance at a good life for something as meaningless as self-determination can only be made smaller by making the education more accessible.
In principle, there's nothing wrong with being patriotic. In practice, there's very little to be patriotic about when your national identity pulls you down and becomes another hurdle that you have to deal with -- a hurdle that other young people don't have simply because they were born somewhere else.
I'm not talking about patriotism. I'm talking about the Iranian view that America came into their country to interfere with their self determination, they kicked us out and we are still interfering with their self determination via sanctions -- like an abusive parent that continues to stalk an adult child who fled home.
Given that the US gives Iranian Nationals no means to get free of the black mark against them for simply having been born there, they don't have to feel any loyalty whatsoever to their country to be intensely against what the US is doing to them.
of course that's not USA's problem with Iran, it's Iranians problem. it's an impossibly difficult problem to solve, and the more economically stable the regime is, the more resources they can spend on their survivability. Saudi Arabia will probably never have a chance to overthrow, they have too much resources to detect and squash any resistance.
Iran on the other hand is in a unique position of instability that they just might have a small chance of brighter future, small chance that will end the moment the sanctions will be lifted.
Although there are facts in your point, it's not all of it. China is also under sanction, and also under domestic internet filtering.
Iran also has its own internet filtering.
The point here is to reach out to Google and Apple and ask them to brainstorm on this problem, maybe we find a way to stop limiting humanity over politics.
Sanctions only strengthen the regime, while economic prosperity strengthens the progressive people and weakens the regime. Both regimes desperately need an enemy to survive.
huge misconception. used to be
true, until surveillance tech came along. overthrows never came from progressive people, who believe in peaceful ways, it came from the lowest people in society who no longer have
anything to lose. overthrowing is an act of desperation, the last thing people will do, only when the situation is no longer bearable.
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps does any intention to publish something on Google and Apple platforms, on the contrary, they want to have their own platform. In other word, sanctions are aligned with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
Any sanctions align with feudal regimes. How would countries punish such regimes without sanctions? Military operations? That's even worse. Personally I don't see a clear answer to such hard question.
Pray tell: how did starving Iraqis to the point where 500,000 children under the age of five alone die from malnutrition[0] punish the Iraqi government?
All it did was convert the secular military dictatorship into an extremist religious dictatorship and the effects of this punishment are still being felt today around the entire world[1].
The 80 million Iranians are currently held hostage by two entities. First, it is their own government (which is by far not the worse in the world, being in Iran feels more free than one would expect).
The Iranian people are not the target -- Persia is a rich ancient civilization that's being repressed -- the West knows this and wants to see the Iranian people's massive creative potential unleashed.
Sanctions are designed as a non-kinetic force applied to pressure the Iranian government into a weakened position. The Iranian people play a significant role in amplifying the pressure. The louder and more vocal their voice becomes, the more pressure their government will feel. If the Iranian people want a change, the change has to come from within.
At some point, when the people amplify the pressure beyond the point the government can withstand, the situation tips and the people force their government to release. This is the effect the sanctions are designed to create.
> Sanctions are designed as [..] when the people amplify the pressure beyond the point the government can withstand
Do you have any historic evidence that it ever worked like this?
I don't, and therefore, I think the sanctions are a predatory policy designed to break the country so it could be attacked by the U.S., where the military-industrial complex is getting too horny.
I mean, I could understand sanctions in the style of European sanctions against Russia, which are targeted at oligarchs and very specific in avoiding damage to ordinary Russians. That at least would be understandable.
But Iran sanctions.. no, I think we know the history all too well.
> The Iranian people are not the target
This is just empty words. Action speaks louder.
And even if the sanctions work as you describe in practice:
Vaclav Havel said that it's not a moral obligation of oppressed people to revolt (and risk their life), and therefore, it is immoral to pressure them to do that. (What is the point of fighting for freedom if you don't get to choose whether you want to be fighting or not?) I think I agree with that, and I am certainly glad that my country (Czech Republic) was never a target of severe U.S. sanctions.
> > Sanctions are designed as [..] when the people amplify the pressure beyond the point the government can withstand
> Do you have any historic evidence that it ever worked like this?
It worked on South Africa. My hope is similar sanctions could be put on Israel to force it to end the occupation of Palestine. But in these cases the sanctions are for specific wrongdoings that the State can address. The US sanctions against Venezuela, Iran and previously on Cuba are much broader in scope. The US is essentially saying "we will sanction you until you roll over and die" which is of course completely counter-productive. The mullahs in Iran aren't going to surrender just because the US tells them to.
"It worked on South Africa... in these cases the sanctions are for specific wrongdoings that the State can address."
Apartheid South Africa was justifiably asked to change their entire government system, and to hand over power from the ruling racial minority to the majority. Iran - even according to Pompeo's maximalist "12 demands"[0] - is being asked for far less: none of the demands relate to internal affairs, much less asking the mullahs to lose influence on the government.
There is also a question (even if we take the demands at the face value, for the sake of argument), how can public in Iran reasonably check that government is following these demands?
Really, how is that going to work operationally. Let's say I am demonstrating at the street in Tehran. I can readily tell that there is undemocratic oppression, OK. But how can I check that the government is not developing nuclear weapons or supporting terrorism, when this is hard to tell for normal citizen even in democratic countries?
IMHO, for the objectives to make sense, it would require these to be verifiable by the people pressuring the government (which you have so kindly decided to pull into the conflict). The fact that these demands are not verifiable is casting a shadow over the motives.
You as an individual can check very little. That's true even in a full democracy. Even in a full democracy, you often have to rely on friends, media and civil society to know what's going on.
If there's is some space for an opposition (which your demonstration example implicitly assumes), there's some space for listening to non-regime media and organizations. Indeed, many people in Iran use Satellite TV despite it being officially banned. They may or may not trust American-owned TV, but there are plenty of alternatives.
If, for example, inspectors are not allowed to check for nuclear activity, the world would raise a ruckus and the average Iranian citizen will be able to hear it and evaluate the validity of these claims, even if the regime tried to hide it.
That said, I suspect the intention of the current American administration is to do a new deal with the regime, not to have the people rise up. They may wish for that scenario, but it's not something they are working towards or something they rely on in order to pressure the regime.
I think it depends on the issue. Things that affect lot of people (like can I criticize government official in public or police brutality against a minority) are easier to check than things that do not (development of nuclear weapons).
Also, democratic systems have sort of "defense in depth". I know that some free media exist, so I can reasonably trust their independence on government. We have freedom of information acts, which requires the government to at least tell the truth. And so on.
So it seems to me, to ask Iranians to rise up if they feel their government is lying about development of nuclear is effectively equivalent of developing a modern democratic society, at the very least.
> the world would raise a ruckus and the average Iranian citizen will be able to hear it and evaluate the validity of these claims
That is still very vague, how are they gonna do it. Based on my indirect experience with communist regime, majority will probably believe foreign media unconditionally (believe me, they will know state media lie constantly, I know many emigrants were surprised that there is unemployment in the West, they thought it was a state propaganda), and a decent minority (about 20-30%) will not believe these claims and support the ruling class.
But - only extremely small minority will consider "international ruckus" a large enough problem so they would risk a life for it. Especially from a community which decided to throw sanctions on the nation.
> intention of the current American administration is to do a new deal with the regime
Well, that's how this problem needs to be resolved - in a diplomatic way. That's the standard way to do it - mutual inspections to see if there are nuclear weapons, or mutual disarmament. You don't need to involve the citizens, especially since they cannot meaningfully keep tabs on their own government.
So you agree that in the case where the international community finds Iran has an active program to build nuclear weapons, most Iranians would believe them? So the information problem is practically solved.
As for motivation, well, there are already significant sanctions on Iran, and that's with merely the US alone. If Iran restarts a significant nuclear program, I think the response would be much more than my previous euphemism of 'ruckus'.
But I don't expect (or ask) the Iranian people to rise up, though this regime well deserves it. That would be really nice, but it seems to me the other outcomes are more likely. Most likely both sides will be able to reach some diplomatic conclusion (since neither wants a war).
> o you agree that in the case where the international community finds Iran has an active program to build nuclear weapons, most Iranians would believe them?
I think it's a moot point. If Iranian government agrees to the inspections (which is a big question why it should), then there is no purpose for them to hide the program from their own public.
There is a distinction between sanctions and diplomacy. Sanctions are not diplomacy. Diplomacy is making an agreement (on the level of national leadership, sidestepping the question of its legitimacy), which might be easier to get without threats or undermining the economy of the nation.
It's my opinion that nuclear disarmament can only happen if we treat everyone the same. So the countries which have significant nuclear stockpiles cannot go around and tell other countries to suck it up.
> But I don't expect (or ask) the Iranian people to rise up
"If Iranian government agrees to the inspections (which is a big question why it should), then there is no purpose for them to hide the program from their own public."
Sure there is. It's to make them appear to be defending themselves from a nefarious foreign plot. 'We cheated because we can' is not a good PR point even in those regimes.
"If Iranian government agrees to the inspections (which is a big question why it should)"
The truth of the matter is that the world doesn't want a nuclear arms race in the ME, nor do we want crazies which threatened to destroy another state to have nukes. That is treating Iran uniquely, but it's a unique regime with unique behaviour.
"So the countries which have significant nuclear stockpiles cannot go around and tell other countries to suck it up."
In our reality they can. That may not be ideal, but it is stable and prevents new world wars.
"Why do you defend sanctions as a tool, then?"
To get an inspection deal without sunsetting clauses and other loopholes, to pressure the regime to stop its malign foreign behaviour. I'd have also liked a change in the human rights situation, but that's apparently not a goal of this US administration.
"That doesn't make any sense, once Iran has agreed to cooperate with the inspectors."
In the scenario we're talking about, Iran is cheating. Of course they'd want to hide it and claim to the populace they're just being persecuted.
"If you truly don't want that, support denuclearization of Israel."
Well, Israel has had it since the 1960s, without an arms race. Apparently neighbours are not so concerned, but with Iran involved, Saudi has already taken steps to build a reactor. Also, Iranian development can hardly be considered defensive when they are the ones threatening Israel and not the other way around.
"This is pretty rich coming from the U.S., which has literally no business on the other side of the planet."
The same argument could (and has) been used to ask US to let Europe go, first to the Germans, and then to the Commies. It's a bit rich hearing it from a continent which has profited so much from US involvement.
The big corporations of the world keep their governments in check. And the corporations within countries are kept in check by the market forces from their competing interests, government regulation, consumer perception and demand.
At the international level, the international corporations located in multiple countries don't want the different countries they're in going to war with each other, and so the massive leverage of international corporations in open markets provide an invisible hand of unseen forces that keep wars at bay.
If this is supposed to answer my question, I don't understand how. (I do however agree that international trade helps to avoid war, but that is in itself an additional argument against sanctions.)
Fair point. I read somewhere that complying with the US demands would be equivalent to "roll over and die" and that the US didn't expect compliance at all. Maybe not then.
It worked because apartheid SA didn't have an oppressive government (for whites), it had a democratic opppressive populace. Blacks in SA were wholly disenfranchised who had near 0 participation in the national economy and wealth, so sanctions had no affect on them, but did affect the middle class who colluded in their oppression.
Thanks for quoting Vaclav Havel. That was exactly what I was looking for. My father was a revolutionist. The amount of harm and distress it caused to him and his children is beyond imagination. It damaged us beyond repair. That's something that I'll avoid at all costs.
And that quote really says it. Revolting against an oppressive regime on your own is usually your death sentence. Why bother with endless prison and/or death when you can just pack your stuff and move somewhere else and be happy? On a macro level, revolting might be the correct thing to do. But on the micro level, simply leaving is the rational decision.
You're right. For economic sanctions to work, the Iranian people must choose to act. They are in a unique historical position with an opportunity to choose and prove kinetic wars obsolete.
Some people want a war. This is true in every government in every nation. Most people don't. Most people have grown war weary and are ready to move to the era beyond. Economic sanctions are an experiment toward that, an alternative to war that keeps the warhawks at bay and proves kinetic wars are obsolete.
> The Iranian people are not the target -- Persia is a rich ancient civilization that's being repressed -- the West knows this and wants to see the Iranian people's massive creative potential unleashed.
Given that "the West" is largely responsible for installing/supporting repressive Regimes in Iran, that sounds a bit too naive. "Wants to replace the oppressive Regime with an oppressive Regime that will do their bidding" sounds closer to the truth to my ears.
Given the recent examples US led "Regime Change" in the area (Egypt, Libya, Iraq, to a lesser degree Syria), as an Iranian, I'd have some reservations about lofty speeches.
The US people fought several wars to free itself and establish its nation. And then it went back to Europe and fought WWI and WWII to ensure it's free. Iran is one the few places on Earth remaining to be free. But freedom is a choice, and the Iranian people have to choose it.
"The 1953 Iranian coup d'état,[..], was the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in favour of strengthening the monarchical rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on 19 August 1953, orchestrated by the United States [..] and the United Kingdom [..]"
"Mosaddegh had sought to audit the documents of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British corporation (now part of BP) and to limit the company's control over Iranian oil reserves"
The US (same as all countries ever) fought their wars to push forward their interests, no more no less. Of course the narrative the country tells itself is different (same as all other countries who fight wars), but the narrative is false.
If what you said was true, that people being "free" was so important to the US and the reasoning behind all foreign policy, then please explain away slavery? Segregation? Discrimination? Explain the wars of aggression, which despite their operational Orwellian names, have had nothing to do with freedom, or freeing oppressed peoples. Explain policies of supporting brutal right wing dictators throughout Latin America, the training of death squads, the military school of the Americas, the CIA coups / assinations of democratically elected leaders, the torture prisons, the giving of asylum to those not only reported of being involved in the above, but charged (in their home countries).
If what you said was true, that the US really was the first, noble country doing everything to "free" oppressed peoples the above wouldn't happen, but it does. Unless you mean freedom is for some, oppression for others, that could be argued perhaps somewhat true, but if so, then it negates what you are saying.
This isn't to single out the US, as I said the same is true for all global power countries since the beginning of time, but the narrative that the US only starts wars in a selfless manner is quite frankly ridiculous and naive beyond belief to anyone who has even an elementary understanding of world history as opposed to home state propaganda
The US (same as all countries ever) fought their wars to push forward their interests, no more no less. Of course the narrative the country tells itself is different (same as all other countries who fight wars), but the narrative is false.
The American War of Independence [1] is how the country was founded. If you think that narrative is false, how did the US come to be?
Yes. Here's what a group of Navajos chose to do the day after Pearl Harbor [1]...
"In this moment of national trial, Stephen and his son Hugh published an op-ed piece in The Times-Picayune. Recalling an episode from the Day after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, the piece started this way:
“On Dec. 8, 1941, a large group of Navajo Indians saddled
their horses, loaded their rifles and rode off their
reservation to the nearest Army recruiting center. They
told the surprised recruiting officer that they were ready
not just to enlist, but to start fighting that very day.
Their country had been attacked. They would go to war.”
Stephen and Hugh used this incident to offer a telling illustration of the American Spirit—how it manifests itself, what it means.
These Native Americans had not been treated well by their government, by American society at large. Their culture and their language had been under attack, marginalized, discriminated against, for many years. Their opportunities in education and work were few.
But even these Navajo in their hardscrabble existence had a sense of the American ideal, the promise of individual rights, of opportunity for a good life as pursued first by our Puritan forebears, then by this country’s Founding Fathers—and as spelled out in the Bill of Rights.
In 1941 these Native Americans knew this promise, this ideal—and their country too now—was under attack. So they joined millions of other Americans to fight Japan and Germany in faraway places.
In fact, the Navajo Code Talkers [2] became a legendary weapon in our WWII military arsenal, for they were able to speak openly over the radio in the field—confident that the enemy would never crack their language. The Navajo reflected the common sentiment of the day: “We’re all in this together.” And their selfless acts spoke to the enduring American Spirit, the bright connecting thread in the fabric of our Democracy. This spirit is sometimes difficult to define or to quantify, but it holds great power—and you know it when you see it.
Our country would never have survived and prospered without this spirit. In fact, it wouldn’t have survived its earliest days. But where did this spirit come from? ..."
These sanctions are designed to foster resentment in Iranians toward their government. The seeds of this resentment are already blossoming in the post-Iran/Iraq war generation developing these apps. This generation is simply not capable of conforming to the religious zeal required of them by the ayatollahs, sanctions or not. The days are numbered for the velāyat.
The funds received by an Iranian civilian entrepreneur are still open to subjugation by the government. Without these funds, it will be more difficult for this government to destabilize neighboring states, blackmail the Sunnis across the gulf, and energize Hezbollah in their explicitly stated goals to genocide the Jews.
It doesn’t work this way. Iranian government use every mean of propaganda available to them to amplify the effects of sanctions on the civilian population, and make sure that everyone thinks that the US is to blame. Sanctions that touch civilians is the gift for propaganda.
To the US credit, they were much more careful with applying sanctions to Russia: I am Russian (who lives abroad and doesn’t support our current government), and despite sanctions, I still can get the US visas, open a Github account, publish apps in App Store etc. I am really lucky I am not Iranian. I can’t do anything about the current government, Russia is not exactly a democracy, even if they maintain the motions and visibility of it.
These sanctions also make it impossible for Iranians to live their lives away for their government's supposed zeal. People trying to evade their government's yoke depend on external channels. Cut off these channels, and you only increase their dependence on their government.
The funds received by an Iranian civilian entrepreneur are still open to subjugation by the government.
The US is almost at war with Iran so I personally find the title quite silly. The iranian entrepreneurs may soon find themselves blasted by tomahawk missiles.
Tensions hadn't turned into war yet, of course, nobody can predict there would be actually any war or not, it seems close. But even if there's a war, there are innocent people on both sides. We can't ignore the lives of innocent people because of conflicts between politicians.
Now, your services that you host on Google Cloud are not available. Say you are Gitlab, and you host there (they do!). Now, if you put your Open Source project on Gitlab, that project is not accessible to Iranians either (as well as other sanctioned countries).
As someone you spends a couple of weeks every year in Iran, I can tell you that arbitrary websites breaking because of blocks on the US side have a far worse effect on my ability to work then the fact that Facebook and Twitter is blocked.
Why doesn't the documentation for date-fns work? Oh, they load the data from Firebase.
Why can't I compile by Android app? Oh, the Android repository is hosted on Google Cloud.
Etc.