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].
[0] https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/05/iran-nati...
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.
[0] https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/435807/Iranian-nationality-...
Edit: and people abiding by them because “it is the law”...
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 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.
It's an amazing country. A price of "more paperwork to enter the USA" was an absolute bargain in my book.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Great for him, not so good for a couple of angry customers that got no answers to emails.
He set an out of office but also said to those customer that he would reply to any queries ... oops
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."
https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/update-st...
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
What does that mean, exactly? What specific actions do you propose people take?
I've written about my own experience at https://alireza.gonevis.com/how-i-didnt-get-my-first-paying-...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The funds received by an Iranian civilian entrepreneur are still open to subjugation by the government.
So it's like civil asset forfeiture?
That's the very definition of war. Sending an open letter to Google and Apple seems a bit misplaced?
> 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.
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...
Does anyone know enough about the legal angle to talk about what it would take to develop an alternative platform not impacted by US sanctions?
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.
EDIT: "seldomly" should be "to a less extent"
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.
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.
