Apple Is Pulling Apps By Iranian Developers From The App Store To Comply With US Sanctions (buzzfeed.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple is pulling apps created by Iranian developers that are specifically designed for people in Iran from its App Stores to comply with US sanctions, The New York Times reports. Apple does not sell its products in Iran and an Iranian version of the Apple App Store doesn't exist, but smuggled iPhones are popular among wealthy Iranians. Iranian developers have created thousands of apps for these users and offer them on App Stores in other countries including the US App Store. For the last few weeks, Apple has been removing Iranian food delivery and shopping apps, and on Thursday, it removed Snapp, an Uber-like ride hailing app that is popular in Iran.

Comments

Re:Hearts and minds!

[hey!]

The point of sanctions is to force (or entice) someone to do something.

But the sanctions stick only works if you're willing to stop when they do whatever it is you want.

Short of invading (which would be much, much harder than Iraq), there's no way we can stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. We can't even stop North Korea from having nuclear weapons, and for much the same reason: they don't have to shop around the world for yellowcake. They can dig uranium right out of their own soil.

And Iran is a far more technologically advanced nation than North Korea. It has 30x the GDP too. So we can't use sanctions to force them not to develop nuclear weapons. The most we could do is convince them that they're better off without nukes.

So Iranian sanctions only have a chance of working if you have some kind of end game.