Apple Is Pulling Apps By Iranian Developers From The App Store To Comply With US Sanctions (buzzfeed.com) 101
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.
Hearts and minds! (Score:1)
Re:Hearts and minds! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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The same way two Administrations earlier we tried [nytimes.com] the same with North Korea? That played out beautifully [washingtonpost.com], didn't it?
Rather, because they do understand it better than you do...
Isr [wikipedia.org]
Re: Hearts and minds! (Score:1)
Because if history has shown us one thing, it's that unprovoked bombings in countries that pose no realistic threat to us achieves lasting success.
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Directly or through proxies?
'Unprovoked' Arabs (Score:2)
Because if history has shown us one thing, it's that unprovoked bombings in countries that pose no realistic threat to us achieves lasting success.
Israel's raids on Iraq's, and a few years ago, Syria's, attempts to build nukes did! Both countries switched their focus to chemical/biological weapons.
And both countries were run by rulers who were committed to wiping Israel off the map. Countries that fought wars against Israel in the past, so not sure what you mean by 'realistic threat'
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Of course this is bullying of those nations who have nuclear technology against those who don't...
What gives one country more of a right to develop nuclear technologies than any other? It's basically bullying and keeping smaller countries "in their place".
Look at existing countries which *do* have nuclear weapons such as pakistan. They're not stupid enough to actually use those weapons because they know the retaliation would immediately wipe them out, but simply having them gives them a much louder voice an
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Didn't you know? You're not allowed to have nukes until you have a Central Bank owned by the Rothschilds [reddit.com]
E Pluribus Pluribus.
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Using reddit as supporting evidence doesn't make your assertion more persuasive.
Islamic nukes (Score:2)
Of course this is bullying of those nations who have nuclear technology against those who don't... What gives one country more of a right to develop nuclear technologies than any other? It's basically bullying and keeping smaller countries "in their place". Look at existing countries which *do* have nuclear weapons such as pakistan. They're not stupid enough to actually use those weapons because they know the retaliation would immediately wipe them out, but simply having them gives them a much louder voice and stops other countries from pushing them around and making unreasonable demands against them.
Communist countries having nukes, while tragic, had one saving grace: since they were interested in self preservation, they never actually used those, as that would inevitably provoke a counter-attack. Even in North Korea's case, despite the sabre-rattling, they've not gone that far.
Islamic countries having nukes are different. Since they're capable of suicide attacks and indeed have eschatological ambitions, they are more likely to use it than not. Pakistan having nukes is bad enough, and so would be
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Some problems have no (known) easy solutions. People don't want to solve them the hard way, so they keep doing futile easy things, telling themselves that doing something is better than doing nothing. But it's not necessarily so.
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The same way two Administrations earlier we tried [nytimes.com] the same with North Korea? That played out beautifully [washingtonpost.com], didn't it?
Iran and North Korea are not comparable in this instance. North Korea is a military dictatorship, controlled either by the Kim family, or a small cadre of folks using the Kims as figureheads. It is incredibly closed and repressive, and who's average citizens are kept in a state of deprivation, with little to no access to outside world views. The military in NK knows that the only way they can hold on to power, and their lifestyles, is by making the idea of attacking them so unpalatable that the rest of the
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The distinctions you are outlying make no difference to the point: that countries intent on obtaining nuclear weapons will not give up that ambition in exchange for improved economic ties/lifting of sanctions. Worse, they will use the improved economy to hasten the nuclear program. In this Iran and North Korea are perfectly comparable.
Not true — their bomb-making facilities can be bombed. The same w
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Except that Iran learnt that lesson and distributed it all over the country. Also, in many cases, they have underground facilities that could even be MOAB resistant. Not an easy thing to do.
I do agree w/ your underlying point though: Iran's nuclear program needs to be aborted, and also, Pakistan's one needs to be undone. Their program is centered in Chagai in Balochistan, near the borders w/ both Afghanistan & Iran. Since the US has now decided to hold Pakistan accountable - in sharp contrast to t
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Except that may be enough of a countermeasure for something to remain after an Israeli attack. But nothing will remain, if America's airforce does it...
It does not have to be "easy", it has to be possible — and we know how.
The recent attack on Syrian airbase (and smaller-scale bombings of Hezbollah by Israel [nytimes.com]) have shown [chinatopix.com], that Russian r
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I do agree that their bomb making facilities can be bombed. I do disagree w/ your analogy - that it would be as simple as Israel's 1981 bombing of the Osirak reactor. Not only would it not be a single - or even several raids. Unlike 1981, when Israel could make a single attack w/o breaking into full scale war, that won't be possible here.
The only way the US can pull it off is if they do a nighttime bombing campaign on all the known sites - using ICBMs launched from anywhere - Diego Garcia, et al. Also
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actually new sanctions bill (against north korea, iran and russia ) was opposed by trump administration(on the ground it limited executive branch's ability to conduct diplomacy with flexibility), but was passed with overwhelming(veto proof) bipartisan support by house and senate.
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
stop posting uniformed nonsense, stay informed and keep up!
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Only the Russia part was opposed by the White House. They have consistently called for more sanctions on Iran, and have signed off on some already that pretty clearly violate the treaty.
Sanctions & war (Score:2)
The part that the White House opposed was denying the president the authority to lift those sanctions w/o Senate approval. They ought to have challenged it in court on constitutional grounds.
If the president is the commander in chief and can declare wars, an extension of that authority is that he can also end wars and declare peace. Imposing or lifting sanctions are extensions of that, since many countries often choose to diplomatically regard that as a de-facto declaration of war. In fact, in WWII, J
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You do realize that dictators lie, agree to things they have no intention of honoring. Right? Its kind of why they are dictators.
And when you realize that Iran is more of an existential threat due to the entire class of robed Imams trying to usher in the age of the Mahdi via nuclear war, it makes it something even worse that a psychopath (spoiled) man-child with a god complex.
We can contain North Korea, but we cannot contain people with suicidal tendencies.
I don't have a solution short of turning Iran into
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Iran represents no more of an existential threat to the US than Pakistan does.
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Re:Hearts and minds! (Score:4, Insightful)
Go look up the number of times in history that Iran has attacked another country.
Then go look up the number of times that another country has attacked Iran.
Then, realize you've been duped by effective propaganda, and stop it.
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Number of attacks is not a simple thing to compute. Iran has its fingers in Iraq, Syria, Oman, Lebanon. They're no worse than the Saudis and better than the Americans by that measure, but they clearly have regional ambitions beyond their borders.
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You do realize that dictators lie, agree to things they have no intention of honoring. Right?
Have you heard of "trust but verify"? You don't lift sanctions because they claim they'll do something, you lift sanctions when they allow independent inspections.
What you don't do however is tell them that there's no way to get the sanctions lifted, because then they have no incentive to do what you want them to do.
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And when they (reluctantly and intentionally slowly) allow independent inspections that do show they do indeed comply with whatever the sanctions are for then you can't just make up some sketchy false information in order to attack them anyway. Works for USA anyway. Leader of the free world right?
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This Administration doesn't know how to tie its collective shoelaces, let alone manage complex files like Iran. In reality, however, the cranking up of Iranian sanctions is more Congress than the White House, and was part of the bargain that entrenched sanctions against Russia against any interference by the White House. Trump supporters should now become more and more aware that Congress is steadily withdrawing powers from the Presidency and boxing the office in, largely because the man occupying the offic
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Trump supporters should now become more and more aware that Congress is steadily withdrawing powers from the Presidency and boxing the office in
And if the Trump presidency accomplishes no more than this it will have been a tremendous success. The US should not be a monarchy and it should not be a winner take all contest every four years to elect a supreme ruler. If Trump can convince America to withdraw power from the presidency, I'm all for it. Now if only we could convince people to allow diversity among the states so that people with differing opinions can share the country without one size fits all restrictions on every aspect of behavior, mayb
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Sanctions however don't hurt the government of the target country, as those in power will still have their own black market channels to get whatever they want. On the other hand, these sanctions do hurt:
American companies - like Apple, all those potential customers in Iran will now go elsewhere, probably to a chinese or russian vendor who will happily supply to Iran.
Iranian people - now have less choice, and will lose any investment they made in existing devices or apps and will have to deal with reduced fu
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In fact this HELPS the Iranian government
We never managed to learn that particular less in fifty years of US-Cuba relations.
Cuba (Score:2)
Okay, Cuba is a great example of why sanctions are a moral policy. Only the US has (actually now had) sanctions against Cuba. Every other country in the world has normal trade relations w/ Cuba: much of its trade is w/ Europe. Despite all that, the Cuban people continue to live in abject poverty and oppression.
Those who make the argument that sanctions only hurt people, not the government can learn from this example. Even not having sanctions has hurt the Cuban people. At this stage though, it's j
Re: (Score:2)
"Short of invading... there's no way we can stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons."
The U.S. and Israeli military now has these things called "bombs" and "missiles" that can blow things up without requiring an invasion.
You should read Military Times
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Both Israeli and American senior military staff have already admitted that there's no easy way to destroy Iran's nuclear program with air power alone.
Otherwise Israel would likely have taken care of business on their own by now.
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You have to know where to drop the bombs, which, without physical access to the country, you won't.
It's probably impossible to hide a HEU processing facility, period, but the Pu route could feasibly be hidden from aerial surveillance.
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You can use sanctions to force a country to produce nuclear weapons, unfortunately. Already forced North Korea to it -- they know it's their only negotiating leverage with the west, and they have nothing more to lose.
If sanctions were actually meant to stop countries becoming nuclear, they might be designed in a way that would work. But nuclear sanctions are largely just an excuse to increase economic war against an enemy. Hence the lack of sanctions on Israel's nuclear program and the half-hearted slight r
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Nukes as negotiating leverage? Are you seriously deranged? That kind of threat is likely to get your country turned into a slag heap and all of your people killed.
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South Africa.
South Africa (Score:2)
The reason sanctions worked in the case of South Africa is that they weren't a dictatorship: they did care about what happened at least to their White people, and also, they did care what European countries and the US/Canada/Australia/New Zealand thought about them.
Neither of these applies to Iran, Cuba or North Korea
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Only Americans are worried about Iran. Everyone else is worried about America! If you're American and worried about Iran you're consuming the wrong news sources.
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Way to go America cooperating with the ruling Mullahs in protecting the Iranian people from evil western influences. I'm sure they appreciate the help.
smartphones in Iran (Score:2)
While Trump has spoken about the need for peace w/ Russia, as well as urging peace b/w Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palis, he's never said that he wants peace w/ 'the Iranian people' (which is about as represented by their regime as Castro or Maduro represent the Cuban or Venezuelan people)
So this will prevent Iranians from having any use for iPhones, and shuts Apple out of that market. Although I wonder - why now? They could have done it all this while to protest Iran's persecution of LGBTQ people. Also
Obligatory (Score:1)
Now that takes courage!
Why now? (Score:1)
Did something just happen to trigger this? The decades old US sanctions against Iran were partially lifted [treasury.gov] on January 16, 2016. Why does Apple suddenly feel the need to clamp down now?
Re: Why now? (Score:2)
Probably someone at the government level just noticed the loophole and pulled their gun on Apple. Sadly there is nothing you can do as a company in the US if the US unilaterally decides to kill off your business in a particular country, it doesn't even go to regular courts and any attempt to publicize it will be treated as you're a treasonous SOB by the news media.
And? (Score:4, Insightful)
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... which technically applies to anything and everything with a EULA.
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Iraq and Iran are two different countries.
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So you offered criticism but no solution. Other than sanctions, how do you pressure a rogue that threatens other nations with annihilation into complying with nuclear weapons sanctions?
BTW, sanctions or no sanctions, it's not like the Iranian people -- the overwhelming majority of whom are poor -- aren't going to suffer at the hands of the powerful./p?
Re: This is a bad strategy (Score:3)
Not sure, it doesn't seem like many people gave the US any sanctions when they actually did use them so the point about sanctions is grandstanding by bigger nations, thus the argument is moot.
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Okay so 200 years ago, people used to drink strychnine "for health benefits". I offer to you that strychnine is actually toxic and detrimental to your health in any quantity that has any effect whatsoever, and you should stop drinking it.
You might have noticed my criticism was that we're proving to the Iranian people that they should definitely support their government in destroying
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First, you put sanctions on the bastards who messed up Iran placing tyrants into power.
Well they're pretty much all dead now. So their "descendants", as in those that now hold those positions or modern equivalent? Well if you're talking from a US perspective they're your "besties" so sanctions won't be high on the agenda.
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The thing is that sanctions hardly change anything. The sanctioned countries radicalize even more and hatred grows within the population because many end up thinking that the US is to blame for their poverty (which might or not be true). I don't have a solution for this problem, but perhaps it all starts calling them "rogue" just because they have a different mindset. I don't think Iran will start nuking everyone else just because they have nuclear power. Cuba is not going to invade other countries. North K
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Pretty much the same thing I said, yeah, though you got modded up and I got +0 Flamebait. Probably not for putting "Iranian" instead of "Iraqi" talking about when we dropped bags of food.
It's not like it's an unfounded assertion. Economic sanctions really do mainly attack a country by starving out its labor force--the civilian population providing the economic productivity which runs the nation-state--which is a less-ugly form of bombing schools and hospitals. If we're going to use force, we should us
Re:This is a bad strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sums it up well. They saw what happened to Iraq. Why wouldn't they want nukes to defend themselves? Can't blame them one bit.
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I am a balanced person who can see the merits of Iran. Iran has a lot going for it, historically & today.
- Iran has an amazing historical art, Zoroastrian origins, historical precedents in human rights & rights of mothers with state-care, and medicine & math.
- Iran was a progressive country until the 70's/80's.
BUT when you say
>A country that has not posed a threat to anyone...
You are really showing a lack of world knowledge.
- Iran routinely threatens the infidel Israel, the white-devil USA,
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Technically, a country is considered "rogue" if it does not play in the UN's various treaty regimes (e.g., IAEA) , or violate terms of a UN security council resolution (e.g., United Nations Security Council Resolution 1929 disallowing Iran to test ballistic missile tech).
Probably isn't "fair", but things in geo-politics are rarely ever fair.
Despite president Carter's totally inept handling of the Shah (despite being warned by the State Department) that resulted in the anti-USA escalation after his overthrow
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Exactly what I was thinking. They should have known better than to buy iPhones; Apple is infamous for this kind of thing.
this is why central control = bad (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple also recently removed VPN apps used by Chinese people to avoid the Great Firewall and read and say things their govt doesn't want them to read and say, after pressure from the Chinese government.
Central control is dangerous, even when the party with the control is a "good guy". They can be leaned on by others with the power to hurt them, and have to do that other's bidding. Or they can just screw up and brick 100 million IoT devices which are centrally controlled.
The original idea of the internet wa
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Central control is dangerous, even when the party with the control is a "good guy".
Who are these "good guys" I hear people talk about? I think they may be imaginary.
Bah Humbug.... (Score:3)
...removing Iranian food delivery and shopping apps, and on Thursday, it removed Snapp, an Uber-like ride hailing app that is popular in Iran.
Thus neutralising yet another key component of Iran's uranium enrichment industry's supply chain ... or not.
Winning hearts and minds (Score:3)
one poke in the eye at a time.
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The apps Apple is pulling are specifically ones that were produced by Iranian developers in the first place.
Another reason (Score:2)
I'll add this sort of thing to my lengthy list of reasons that you don't want to be locked into a walled garden: it subjects you further to the vagaries of international politics.
magnitsky act is the way to go (Score:2)
sanctions against whole countries (particularly non-democratic) hurt way more innocent people than the perpetrators of whatever misdeeds sanctions aim to stop.
target specific bad acting individuals.