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.

Re:This is a bad strategy

[Zemran]

How is Iran a rogue nation? What right do we have to criticise them? A country that has not posed a threat to anyone wants the right to defend itself from those (including the US) that threaten it. Why shouldn't they? Instead going around threatening countries the one thing that would work far better would be an incentive to take a different path. The US has never tried that. The Iranians are not a poor people as you suggest and if you went there you would be shocked by how different it is to the propaganda on TV. Iraq was a major ally of ours in that area until out of the blue we destroyed a civilised country as thanks for helping us. We did not beat Iraq as they relied on us for their defence so in reality we beat ourselves. Yes, Iraq gassed Kurds with gas we supplied and using aircraft we were the ground crew for and knew the flight plans of. They attacked Iran for us several times with WMDs we gave them. So Iran has good reason to believe that we will do harm and that they do have good reason to do all they can to defend themselves and also that doing what the US is bullying them to do will not get a good result. Why should they, a long time enemy expect better than a long time ally? They have no reason whatsoever to roll over and every reason to develop whatever they can to defend themselves.