Companies definitely need to push back on extra egregious legal teams who want to block services Iran, as it's mostly paranoia and not that the services actually fall under the jurisdiction of our sanctions. I know amazing people at Google who are doing this work, and I hope others at other companies do the same.
Sanctions are placed on enemies not allies
A father informs his son that the prices have gone up. The son asks: "Does that mean that you will drink less?" - "No son, that means that you will eat less."
I'm one of those operations people who have been required by a legal department to block access from sanctioned countries - I've literally written the HTTP rules to deny access to folks like the original author.
I think about how the infrastructure I write and operate creates situations like these, and while I know I'm partly to blame, it's worth highlighting that this is a by-product of United Stats policies that create pressure on US companies. I'm most certainly _not_ a lawyer, but if this sort of thing bothers you, be cognizant of candidate policies about technology if you want to help enact change - because I doubt most companies will provide services to these and other regions if it'll break export law.
Certainly most of the people in Iran are similar to most of the people around the world. In kindness, compassion, in just trying to get their daily job done and enjoy time with friends and family. If only it was easy to distinguish between the good, the bad, the indifferent. Probably a lot of sanctions don't hinder the most threatening of Iran's activities, while impacting the population. But it does have an effect (not always the ones intended, perhaps).
If the government in power over you is in conflict with others, and/or in conflict with it's own people, it's going to impact you. If you want your life to be better, look for ways to improve your government. True for the USA and everyone else. Another lesson that the USA has been illustrating repeatedly recently is that it's probably better for a nations citizens to reform their government themselves, instead of a foreign power. Until that happens, yes their lives are not going to be as free as they'd like. It's hard and there is a cost to be paid for those freedoms. Many of us are fortunate in that those before us did the hard work and we get to enjoy the benefits. Good luck to the author of the blog, hopefully they can find good solutions.
It's hard to posit a moral high-ground here, when basically every state is actively seeking to undermine the others' cyber security, including the US. Stuxnet is one of the most formidable state-sponsored cyber security exploits, and that was targeted at Iran, it seems easy justification to increase their offensive capability.
I have to admit some naivete here, I don't know the frequency and scale of cyber attacks emanating from Iran, but I'd guess that hostile foreign policy from the US would only intensify that threat towards the US.
State sponsored attempts to hack public network infrastructure fit into a totally different category. These are not the same.
If the US wins, a rough semblance of the freedom and democracy the "West" is accustomed to will be able to face other existential internal or external threats. If Iran wins, the end. We start over at square one winning back our freedoms. Maybe we start immediately, maybe it takes 1,000 years. If I have to choose, I want the US to win this one. It doesn't matter who started it, who is doing it worse. I would like things that support the regime in Iran to stop supporting that regime (in the most humane way possible). And I would like the US, with all its warts and flaws, to win a cyber war with Iran if one must be fought.
Maybe this all sounds extremely unlikely, but the first step towards a superpower like the USA to lose to Iran is for the USA to not be trying at all, and Iran to be trying very hard. Also nuclear weapons are a great leveler.
Therefore the USA must do two things at minimum. Try to have cybersecurity supremacy over Iran, and try to keep Iran from having nuclear weapons. If both of these objectives can be met we don't need to fight them, we can leave them in peace. If either is not met, this war might have to get very physical very quickly. So right now the sanctions don't look so bad, among available options. Not saying there aren't better options, but it's above my pay grade.
> I work for a US company that routinely has to deal with cyber attacks by Iranian professionals, probably government sponsored.
The full article is about services blocking IPs from Iran (and how it's effecting him as a dev). I don't see what cyber attacks have to do with anything? Or do you think these IP bans are a defense against cyber attacks?
All countries do cyber attacks, most countries in the EU have been infiltrated by the NSA and friends. How is that related to companies geo fencing entire countries?
> If the government in power over you is in conflict with others, and/or in conflict with it's own people, it's going to impact you. If you want your life to be better, look for ways to improve your government.
Not to get all political but I think it's pretty clear that the US is the only western country not liking Iran, and they use their influence to have the whole world obey US sanctions. You expecting OP to raise against their government? I say odds of succeeding are slimmer than storming Area 51.
This isn't exactly true. The EU is opposed to Iran's aggressive policies in the region (e.g. in Yemen, Syria, and now Hormuz) and its continued development of ballistic missile technology. They're just content with the 2015 nuclear deal as a starting point, whereas current US policy is not.
It's also worth noting that the EU disproportionately benefits from oil purchases from Iran relative to US so they have their own political self-interests factoring into their decision.
There are some nasty folks in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, but Iran is a large, diverse, and complicated place, and there are many other internally powerful people with different agendas (just like most large diverse countries).
In general openness and cultural/economic exchange help progressive forces within the country, and sanctions help xenophobic hard-liners.
Well, this is a bit simplistic. A lot of Trump actions show a pretty clear pattern: recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, recognition of the annexation of Golan by Israel, recognition of the right of Israel to annex parts of the West Bank. Israel has been campaigning for the US to attack Iran for at least the past 15 years, and has used every diplomatic resource to campaign against the nuclear deal with Iran.
Connect the dots.
I've read in various places that the opposite is actually true -- sanctions from the liberal US strengthens the liberals in Iran by highlighting how the regime's aggressive policy is resulting in economic pain for Iranians.
This didn't really work with China either. Granted, there are plenty of examples where sanctions have failed/backfired but I'd like to reject any "general" statement on the best way to liberalize a country through foreign policy.
I'm genuinely curious - can you please expand on what exactly you mean by this?
All this adds up to a much larger surface area. It's like we're in a stone throwing fight and one side is living in a glass house and the other side is in a mud hut. Losing a cyber war could destroy governments and economies in the West. Imagine no electricity everywhere, no water, no sewer, no planes or trains, no tv or internet. It would be an apocalypse. The same thing happening to Iran might be difficult, but mostly annoying. I'm not sure. In North Korea most people wouldn't even notice.
What on Earth does this mean?
Or help your government because it is the other government who is imposing sanctions on your country and making your life worse.
We don't get to mix and match attributes of various policies
We get to choose 1 candidate, from 2 candidates
Their technology policy will never be a deciding factor
This is why you shouldn't ban Tor. In some places, it is absolutely necessary.
Can anyone report how well privacy pass works nowadays?
I’ve lived under UN sanctions imposed on Serbia under Milosevic regime during the nineties. Two things happen: 1) people in the regime leadership don’t suffer 2) the little people who do suffer feel attacked and rally around the leader. Pretty much the opposite of what the sanctions ostensibly aim to achieve.
This same dynamic played out in Cuba, North Korea, Iran, you name it, for decades with no good effect.
What brought Milosevic regime down was the aerial NATO assault and its aftermath, not the sanctions.
As far as I can tell sanctions are a way for US politicians (they may be imposed by all the western countries, but I can’t think of an example where US wasn’t the leader) to look like they are punishing the offending country without going to war. They just don’t seem to work.
It may also turn out to be just a short term improvement in safety. Hatred toward the West as the perceived, and real, tormentor festers in the population over generations, and that’s a very bad thing long term.
I’m not saying I know of a better solution.
I wonder if/when a big war or disaster occurs much of our computer world will just break. We've built an extremely fragile system now.
It seems plausible, if not very likely, a similar paradigm shift will occur after the first serious cyberwar occurs. We will learn a lot of lessons.
And just like 1914 the dominant powers are clueless.
> left the war knowing oil (and the vehicles it powers) was arguably the single most important strategic factor in wars during that time period (and still today really aside from speculation
Then you responded:
> That's going to change radically in just ten years. Because of solar, wind, and electrified transportation Makes the control of oil vastly less important.
Unless the US military is making a solar, wind, or electric powered series of fighter jets and tanks then the control of oil will be relevant until at least the middle of this century if not the end of this century.
I don't think we'll see a paradigm shift. Energy will still be the single most important strategic factor in electronic warfare. People love to harp on wind/solar/bio/etc... but even though they're growing in acceptance, they won't overtake the primary traditional means of energy production for many decades to come.
Also, pizza's comment is naive and misinformed. Broad sanctions on entire industries can affect the poor, yes. It also affects the people in the middle and also the people near the top! You can't fly in a private jet if 1) you can't buy one and 2) can't get fuel for the jet. Furthermore, sanctions have explicitly been used to target the wealthy and not the poor. See:
https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/s...
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/06/politics/russia-sanctions-oli...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-24/trump-say...
pizza says his one of his interests is "realistic alternatives/complements to pure capitalism," which already demonstrates a misinformed notion of the world: he assumes pure capitalism exists in ANY form. It doesn't. The US is perhaps the most capitalistic society, but Social Security is quite clearly a socialist program in nature. I like Social Security and think it's highly useful, by the way (notwithstanding the storm of the decline of program revenue and increase in program participants).
There is a great podcast floating out there from NPR where they talk about the seemingly real possibility that Russia had a vested interest in getting a president in office just to repeal the Magnitsky Act because it hurt that much.
The effects on Iran are not side-effects. They are clearly the primary goal.
If the head of that state (and party elites etc) don't meet the requests of the sanctioning states, the ensuing poverty can mobilize the impoverished masses. This can backfire and drive them to further nationalism/jingoism, but it opens a window of opportunity for the opposition (and, more cynically, covert agents and external forces).
For those curious about how and where the whole "Iran thing" started: A freely elected Iranian president decided to nationalise oil fields. This irked British Petroleum (Anglo-Iranian Oil Company at the time..) and the USA, so they initiated a coup to overthow the government [1], complete with CIA-paid Iranian mobsters to push the Shah regime.
Years after this imposed rule, the western-propped government was overthrown with an.. anti-western government.
If you look at Iran with the context of 15 - 20 years history, it's impossible to understand the government's rabid anti-west stance. If you zoom out a little bit more - you understand completely.
Finally - the Iranian people suffer incredibly under this regime. The Persian culture has over 5000 years of rich (non-islamic, incidentally..) history. I'd sincerely advise traveling to Iran if you'd like to understand geo-politics a little better.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution
Btw one addition - we all know that US embassy was stormed and employees held hostage in 1979. It gave US political ammunition for decades to come. Do you know why it was stormed? Because it was proper CIA headquarters in all this meddling and impoverishment of iranian people for decades. They shielded themselves with diplomatic immunity. Not something you see mentioned in the (rather bad for all that empty patriotism) movies. But wouldn't you be pissed off if they did this to your own country? To have the potential for greatness due to rich oil reserves, but having little from it because some foreign power installs corrupt ruler to have safe access to oil. Sounds like an african story.
Those employees taken? Most were involved or directly in CIA payroll. No respect there, nor much sympathy. Spies are generally either executed or traded for.
I'd second this, one of the friendliest country I've ever been to. No significant tourist industry yet so most people are not trying to sell you anything. I think it's a genuine wish to be friendly to travellers and especially so given they don't yet get many travellers.
You're somewhat curtailed as a US traveller (not sure if that's still the case) but for anybody else, go.
One tech curiosity from over there: one guy said he used a USB stick that contained his browser and stored his internet history on the stick when in internet cafes (his only way online). That way when the cafe was audited none of his data would be there for inspection by police/security.
Unless you're gay, in which case they reserve the right to execute you. Seems worth mentioning.
EDIT - Does not mean you are playing this timeline game. I meant a few others.
Naturally there's variation on this (Tehran vs. Qu'om / Mashaad) - but at least that was my experience from living and speaking.
Now Iranians have a legitimate reason to use TOR: bypassing sanctions. Turns out it allows them to bypass censorship as well and brings more people into the Tor network.
That is not what we (the West) are hearing in mainstream media.
Edit: I may well be wrong on this as others have pointed out.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/us-sanctions-hit-iran-r...
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/17/inflation-rampant-in-tehran-...?
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/sanctions-t...
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/sanctions-t...
* Heat wave relief in sight after scorching temps... * Disney star Cameron Boyce's mother breaks silence... * 'You're breathtaking' Keanu Reeves pulls another classic Keanu... * Thousands of bones discovered in Vatican crypt... * Miss Michigan winner tweets... * National Ice Cream Day means free cones. Here's what to know... * The Horrors of Jeffrey Epstein's Private Island * The 1 Reason you shouldn't save for retirement
Today's body count for the MI-complex never seems to make the cut.
As a practical matter, Tehran’s domestic governance is irrelevant to most Western readers. My FT, WSJ or Bloomberg subscriptions tend to touch on it about twice a year. Given I have zero influence over the situation, that plenty for me.
Good (for the US) news is, it's working. They're getting ready to negotiate, hence the UK tanker intercepts etc. Weak negotiating position, need bargaining chips. I kind of agree with Lindsey Graham: if you just want nuclear power, there's no need whatsoever to enrich your own uranium. You can buy fuel for reactors from the enriching nations, no problem. I'm sure, given the situation, you could even negotiate the price down to nearly nothing, as well.
The last deal for de-nuclearization already worked, but it was inexplicably terminated.
Or in other words, this was all unnecessary, but some of the damage caused by abandoning a done deal might be reversible.
You do realize that the UK grabbed a tanker first?
The same can't be said of China; People here self-censor even in personal conversations.
I am not a fan of IRI by any stretch but that post does not pass the smell test. And last I checked -- I have relatives in Iran -- no one is "starving".
As for Iran's government not wanting its citizens spilling their daily beans on an Israeli platform, that's pretty sensible. (Would Israel permit its citizens to chat away on platforms from Iran?)
How difficult is it to redirect to a server outside of Iran?
Who resolves "shahinsorkh.ir" for your browser? DNS lookup says 104.24.126.79 and that is in California, United States, and not Iran.
"Let's go invade Iran so Iranians can access Facebook and not starve!!!"
because it's cloudflare
This guy has his full name and his employer on his blog. His employer, "Douran Group"[1], lists Iranian banks, Ministry of Agriculture of Iran, Ministry of Broadcasting of Iran, the Postal Service of Iran, and even a "Islamic Conference" as their clients.
"TOR", "VOA", "Facebook", "Israeli" platforms, and "starving" Iranians, and "elite" entirely unaware of the condition of the populace.
[1]: https://douran.com/fa-IR/Dourtal/1/page/%D8%B5%D9%81%D8%AD%D...
> "not entirely honest"
You are possibly projecting your own family's character. Kindly refrain from discussing matters regarding which you have zero insight. Tashakor.
Please stop using Google Cloud Platform to host your projects.
GCP blocks Iran, so by hosting any part of the app on GCP, your apps become impossible to access from Iran. Azure and AWS do not do this. This form of blocking is exclusive to GCP.
After the switch to GCP, Iranians lost access to gitlab. Firefox Monitor is blocked in Iran for the same reason. The list goes on and on.
I don't believe Mozilla team for example has consciously decided to block Iran, just that their devs do not know about Google's policy regarding Iran. I hope all devs learn about this fact, so they make informed decisions when choosing cloud platforms.
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/programs/...
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Sanctions/Page...
630. Is the provision or delivery of goods or services to an Iranian counterparty after November 4, 2018 allowed?
The wind-down period has ended and the United States intends to fully enforce the sanctions that have come back into effect. The provision or delivery of goods or services and/or the extension of additional loans or credits to an Iranian counterparty after November 4, 2018 — even pursuant to written contracts or written agreements entered into prior to May 8, 2018 — may result in the imposition of U.S. sanctions unless such activities are exempt from regulation, authorized by OFAC, or otherwise not sanctionable.
This does not seem correct. Here is a short non-comprehensive list of services by US companies not blocked in Iran. The list is big enough, and the companies involved large and legally-savvy enough, that this cannot be an oversight.
* Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook
* Google Maps, Waze (quite popular right now in Iran too!)
* Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive
* Github
* Google Keep
* Google Docs, Zoho
* ...
The complete list would be hundreds or thousands of pages long. Based on this, I don't think your assertion is correct. Either that, or every big US company is breaking sanctions on Iran with impunity. That does not seem plausible.
US is creating the situation were enough conservative Iranian (their are enough) are going to support their government just because sanctions and muslim ban exists.
So you all basically think sanctions are going to work and the hardliners are going to cave in and agree to a new deal and not try to crush dissent?
Have you seen state of Venezuela? US threatened to go in and supported an opposition. And the result is failure and real tragedy for the people. Now they are blaiming Cuba.
You don’t need a majority to create a revolution that succeds. You need an enemy which is lacking morale and the means. The Iranian regime supporters now have morale (US dropping out of deal, and allies which can’t stop US influence) and they obviously have weapons to crush the resistance which have none.
In any case, Azure and AWS are complying with the same sanctions without a blanket ban. After all, they are American companies as well. Azure and AWS don't allow customers from Iran to purchase hosting services, but don't block access to all sites hosted on their platforms, and it seems that this is enough for US regulators to not consider them in violation of sanctions. I imagine Google has taken an extreme "better safe than sorry" approach which other players have fortunately decided not to copy.
(Disclosure: I work for MS but have no knowledge of our sanction compliance stuff)
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32678313/what-countries-...
Not saying that's a great solution, but it's what I would try to do, provided VPNs aren't blocked by the government.
Please disregard the message above. USA and Europe too are forbidding you to sell to Iran and a couple of countries. Google is doing you a favor by blocking traffic out of the box. If they didn't do it, you would most likely have to block it yourself.
There are official documents listing items and services you're not allowed to provide with how many years of jails you're risking. Just because you don't know about them and don't care won't be worth squat as a defense when the police will come knocking on your company's doors.
I am not a lawyer, but my understanding, based on the actions of companies with larger legal teams than most companies have employees, is that only a tiny portion of the apps need to be blocked in Iran to be compliant with the sanctions. Simplenote (hosted on GCP) is inaccessible in Iran while Google Keep is accessible, not because of sanctions but because Google's company policy blocks access to anything on GCP. I am sure the Simplenote dev would not be in jail had he chosen to host on Azure.
Hence all businesses should be blocking Iran really, contrary to what you are implying... unless you have a magic business that sells nothing and earns no money. A note taking app might just fly, or not.
Or else some Iranian, by accident, might find your endpoint that just happens to load. What then? You hope he does not rat out your company to the feds?
>Just because you don't know about them and don't care won't be worth squat as a defense when the police will come knocking on your company's doors.
"Terrorism is, in the broadest sense, the use of intentionally indiscriminate violence as a means to create terror among masses of people; or fear to achieve a religious or political aim."
How economic sanctions and maximum pressure different from terrorism? Putting a lot of pressure and pain on ordinary people to achieve political goal, which in this case is surrender of Iran. This is economic terrorism, plain and simple.
Muddying the definitions of words really doesn't help anyone and indeed makes the discussion harder to have, as communication is only possible if both/all participants can agree on their communicative medium - i.e., that they are both using words to mean the same things.
I don't want to justify the actions of Iranian government, in my opinion most governments are evil and power hungry. I am just pointing out that the goal of sanctions, even according to the US officials is to cause suffering for people ultimately in the goal of regime change.
Sever economic sanctions are just another tool in the empire toolbox. Be it against Iran or Cuba for example.
No, you're not in fact pointing that out, you're just stating it without providing any evidence at all.
If you're saying 'the goal is to cause suffer according to US officials' surely you'd have a quote for it? You won't because they did not say that and you just stated something not in evidence. Officially, the purpose of the sanctions is to get 'a better deal'.
Violence, condoned by a state or a group of states.
Not trading with countries stating 'Death to [your country]' == "economic terrorism"
But the fact is that Iran has no air force or any other serious military hardware to defend itself. Because simply they wouldn't sell them to Iran. Most Persian gulf countries have military budget per capita orders of magnitude larger than Iran. In addition they have the might of US military behind them. Missiles are the only reason that Iran is not like Iraq or Libya right now. Iran has been on the hit list of Neocons since long time (you can refer to General Wesley Clark)
Iran experienced a very bloody war with Iraq during 80s where everybody was supporting Saddam Hussein from Soviets to the US and persian gulf monarchies. I know personally people that where harmed by Saddam chemical weapons but international community remained silent for too long. I remember seeing Saddam's missile on the Tehran skies but we had no means of stopping them or retaliating because again nobody cared.
About annihilating another state: How can Iran annihilate a state which has 200 nuclear warheads? It might be other way around.
Now, 'Moderate' President Rafsanjani argued that "the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam". It's best we do not allow such an apocalyptic scenario - such a war could hardly be contained to the Middle East.
>About annihilating another state: How can Iran annihilate a state which has 200 nuclear warheads? It might be other way around.
If the US or Israel really wanted to destroy Iran they could. The US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, in both cases in response to hideously brutal attacks on themselves or their allies. They could do it to Iran, so why haven't they? Because they don't want to, they have nothing to gain from it. They didn't want to invade Iraq or Afghanistan either, and have been trying to get their troop out as fast as possible ever since. The only reason they attacked Saddam or Afghanistan was because of the invasion of Kuwait and the 9/11 attacks. If Iran would just leave them and their allies alone, they'd be fine just buying their oil and selling them Coca-Cola.
Of course AWS does a lot more than just rent VMs, but it seems like a relatively straightforward part of the business to copy.
Does anyone know exactly what sort of actual submission they are looking for from Iran? I really don't believe its about nuclear development.
I hope that any Iranians who can get out will get out.
Quote from Wikipedia:
> A third of the world’s liquefied natural gas and almost 20% of total global oil consumption passes through the strait, making it a highly important strategic location for international trade.
Here is another quote from [2]:
> The United States under Ronald Reagan imposed new sanctions in 1987 after Iran's actions from 1981-1987 against U.S. and other shipping vessels in the Persian Gulf and support for terrorism.
Also Iran is a rich and large country with 80M population that could take a leadership in the region unless stopped by sanctions.
But that is my personal opinion not confirmed by any proofs.
During Obama it was:
We will choke you to death unless you give up your nuclear ambitions.
Now it is:
We will choke you to death unless you shoot yourself in the head.
U.S. is bullying Iran right now and people are starving to death. All because of a partisan issue. Unbelievable.
And don't forget the military industrial complex and its influence to break the peace and sell more weapons.
Trump, riding on the wave of propaganda, just called it the worst deal ever only to have something to criticize Obama's foreign policy over.
These were USA's 12 demands from Iran, and this is Iran's response[2]. Iran has sort of colonized Iraq and Syria, similar to how it has control over Lebanon using Hezbollah. IRGC even recently announced Syria as their 35th province. This video from 6 yrs back captured from a killed Iranian Journalist in Syria gives a clear picture of IRGC's actions in Syria.
https://youtu.be/ZI_88ChjQtU?t=868
I have linked the video at a timestamp where an IRGC soldier says how the Arabs who are living in that village aren't humans, but watch the whole video, it is good. So what is happening is Iran/IRGC is using the Shia identity to get poor and oppressed Shia people from Afghan/Pakistan with a promise of citizenship in Iran, to wage a war against Arabs and Israel. There is also a war going in Southern border of Saudi with the Houthi of Yemen, supported by Hezbollah/Iran[1]. So Saudi and Israel are concerned with this, and using their support from the current Trump administration, they are trying to get Iran to act.
[1] https://twitter.com/lcmporter/status/1152880775580258304
[2] https://twitter.com/FareedZakaria/status/1152647222586036224
If more tools actually shipped with complete documentation, then the Iranian developers life would be just a little easier. I would imagine that they have access to Docker, via mirrors, so why isn't the entire Docker documentation just included.
A deal that gives billions of dollars to the worlds largest supporter of terrorism is not a good deal.
It is appeasement.
When fascist regimes like what run Iran say things like how they're going to nuke Israel and the US, that this is a goal they are pursuing, I believe them.
It's sad that the Iranian people have to put up with the fascists who control their government, but appeasing their government will not solve anything.
No kidding. We should really be charging Saudi Arabia billions of dollars instead of giving them anything.
Any negotiated deal will have tradeoffs. The US's latest policy of total humiliation as articulated by Pompeo seems destined to fail. The regime is not going to sign for that and it will grow increasingly confrontational without options.
A 'relatively invasive' inspection regime where you had to get permission in advance from Iran to visit 'military sites', and nearly all of the restrictions were temporary.
"what specific terror acts are we speaking of?"
There's a pretty massive civil war you may have heard of, where Iran is on the side which uses chemical weapons. Or maybe we could mention sending lots of IEDs to Iraq to kill Americans. Or bombing the AMIA center to kill Jews. And we can't forget the Rushdie affair. Really, the list is endless.
"The US's latest policy of total humiliation"
Got it. Demanding the regime to halt interference in foreign lands == "total humiliation" Holding hostages like Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe != "humiliation".
@muneeb? @perlin-network?
NordVPN is 2.62 EUR per month right now for a 3 year plan. It seems like a lot of good could be done for not much money.
I think a better solution is go setup a bunch of private VPS and setup VPN servers. Then share each of them with a few dozen people each. You can get them for $12/year or less at lowendbox / lowendtalk
Is it true? I always assumed US never blocks access to websites. They would rather ask the hosting provider to take down the website or try to arrest the author.
I'll be honest here, sanctions only slows the internet down because of the VPN overhead, so does the government with its stupid proxies and single point of connection for the whole country, but is it stopping us from doing our job? no.
Censorship: Back in 2010-2011, just before the revolution, ADSL subs were growing fast, government censorship getting tighter. Facebook, Youtube, even Amazon (they don't deliver to Syria tho), are banned. With more websites adopting ssl and people getting more educated about its benefits, government started doing Man-in-the-middle attacks causing the red ugly warning. Fortunately, that didn't last too long, thanks to free VPN services(yes we gave up privacy to foreign firms, to escape local censorship), I believe the government saw that it's attacks are causing people to be more aware of their security rather than helping it in identifying and arresting activists. Luckily most websites use https now. Until recently we didn't have a local ban issue since all the block was done by local forwarding proxies configured to filter certain domains, and only plain http traffic was processed there. I remember seeing Blue Coat hardware being used in some official departments, not sure though if this was used on a larger scale. That was the way to block things, in addition to blocking a few dozens of IP addresses. Now government is trying to tighten the censorship on messaging and VoIP apps to raise the profit for local telecom companies, which are (surprise!) largely owned indirectly by the president through loyal (shadow?) businessmen. They have blocked most connections to Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger, their method is not perfect, but most of the people are using proxies like psiphon or even getting a paid subscription. They will probably try to block the proxies too in the coming years (they are very slow tbh). I heard that they are promoting local VPN services, but didn't find anything relevant, though it's highly possible like the Iranian case.
Sanctions: It's a real pain, especially when it comes to payment, but thanks to diaspora and UAE (which serves the main breathing point for the Syrian companies to avoid sanctions), we have a way to pay for and buy stuff. Now comes the online services, which are blocked by US based companies. We're still using proxies for most of the services, but since few years, most ISPs started implementing their own remote proxy service outside of Syria and passing them some traffic, thus unblocking some services like Apple Store, Google Play, and even Snapchat. But for us devs we still have to use proxies to access AWS, GCP (and everything hosted there), Docker, Bitbucket, Gitlab, everything related to android dev, and many other services. Can the government unblock these to help locals do their work? yes. Will they? probably no, they don't need to do so. Since they can get to Dubai or Paris and enjoy their time there it's all fine. BTW, some people who can afford to live quite a luxurious life have Netflix subscriptions.
Tor? haven't used it since the early days of the revolution. Bad network connection with our crappy infrastructure makes tor dead slow.
Personal Opinion: sanctions or not, foreign companies who want to work in Syria, or Syrian companies that want to work for foreign clients, both found ways to bypass it. We have German companies employing Syrians, I worked for a British firm last year. After all, who wouldn't prefer to pay someone $400/mo to get work done than say $1500/mo? not to mention insurance and taxes. Same for locals, even $300/mo is still very good compared to what most companies offer, for an IT guy at least. Finally, we need a new democratic Syria, by helping Syrians people take the lead and rule themselves freely, weakening Assad's family grip, but the government and its strongmen are finding their way to bypass sanctions, so do sanctions really help or are they only affecting the poor? I have mixed feeling. But had the sanctions been meant to help Syrians, they would have confiscated Assad's family and their loyalist crimes supporters billions in the West.
I think, given that the Supreme Court Chief Justice, John Roberts, never met a first amendment argument that he didn't like, these restrictions could probably be eliminated if not narrowly tailored.
Any significantly large software company could sue to overcome general software export restrictions on First amendment grounds, but most likely they won't. Politically it would be shooting themselves in the foot and inviting wrath from Trump, and they don't get paid to support free speech, they usually just do it incidentally.
Perhaps a little more likely, The EFF could sue again.
Somebody should ask the EFF about export controls on software during their Defcon panel on the 10th or something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_StatesThey are notorious and hated, like death squad level in the free minded, geek community in the country.
I can't believe his post got this much attention and sympathy without anyone noticing he works in a freedom killing company... what a joke!
Sanctions really hurt... good luck using a good cloud provider, which is a backbone for our daily activities as developers. No doubt about that, nothing new.
The problem is our double standards in the middle east, we fuck up everything then blame it on others. They (west, east, x, y) aren't saints but we aren't either. Here is a clear example of this ugly truth.
I know people mostly from minorities (Kurds, atheists, LGBT, secular, Narenji guys) with death sentences in Iran because of their online activities and if there is a single corporation you can easily blame and point to who lands a hand to the government for their inhuman acts it's them, Douran.
Double standards won't work, you can only fool people for a very short period of time in our era.
> his page (Which screams amateur and narcissist)...
Pls tone down personal attacks, if you can.
You really decimate your credibility when you say absurd things like this. If you're willing to misconstrue something as simple as stating your employer on the internet as such a serious character flaw, how can we trust the rest of your judgement to be reasonable?
The right way to move the world forward is to lead by example, to become the society that other countries want to emulate.
Just like arming rebels against a government, the CIA found out, almost never results in anything good[1], then tried it again[2] and it again predictably resulted in something awful.
When it comes to sanctions, they have exacerbated situations that could have been solved with diplomacy. In the case of Iran, we already had negotiated an unprecedented deal with international inspectors having more access to its nuclear facilities and mining sites than any country in history. But that wasn’t enough. The deal was scrapped by Trump simply to erase Obama’s legacy[3], with no plan in place. It’s not just Trump, it’s the Republican leaders[4] and types of presidents the new Republican party tends to elect.[5]
Let’s turn to substance and back up the claim abou sanctions. We have seen this movie before. North Korea, cut off from world trade and under threat, was angling to get nuclear weapons. Clinton had negotiated a deal with Kin Jong Il, called the Agreed Framework[6], in exchange for step by step normalization of relations and lifting sanctions. It was already signed and began to be implemented!
Then the next administration entered office - Bush and the GOP called the deal expensive “appeasement” and scuttled it. Instead, they put more sanctions on North korea.
How did that work out? The people got united under the credible narrative that “they hate our way of life and they hate us” and North Korea got the bomb. With a little help from Ukrainians on the black market[7].
What’s worse is that with no agreement in place or relations with the US North Korea continued to act as a rogue state and gave nuclear technology to Syria to use against Israel. The Syrian nuclear reactor was covertly bombed by Israelis in a pre emptive strike[8] and no country (including Syria) spoke about this for months.
I could go down the line to show that diplomacy beats sanctions every time and that sanctions radicalize the population and make them support the very thing you want them to abandon.
I will jump straight to Godwin’s law. The Nazis came to power because of crushing sanctions on Germany after the Treaty of Versailles. Yes, France hated Germany and yes they wanted them to pay reparations for starting World War 1. But as a result, the German people were reduced to complete poverty and hyperinflation. What did they do? They had a nationalist fervor and pushed for leaders to “restore” Germany, armed themselves to the teeth, and then launched World War 2!
Imagine if there was no sanctions. Would the Germans elect Nazis if they were prosperous? Would North Koreans not develop a rootless cosmopolitan bourgiousie class if they were allowed to trade with the world? These things happen when sanctions are LIFTED. You want to help a country — lift sanctions on its people!
1. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/arming-rebels-has-...
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/world/middleeast/cia-syri...
3. https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-48978484
4. https://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/the-gops-no-compromis...
5. https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2004/jan/12/usa.books
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework
7. https://www.npr.org/2017/08/14/543477518/north-koreas-secret...
Iran is on an unprecedented aggressive and violent push towards dominating the Middle East.
They are deployed in Syria, building forward bases to threaten Israel, destabilize Lebanon and pushing it closer to another war with Israel by funding and arming Hezbollah.
They are sponsoring and arming Shiite militias in Iraq and provide them with ballistic missiles to threaten other Middle East countries.
They are supporting and funding the Houthis in Yemen who are responsible for the civil war and attacks on Saudi Arabia and Gulf states. They are supporting, funding and arming Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, both of which are recognized terrorist groups intent on murdering Jews.
They are responsible for historical attacks on US forces in Lebanon during the 80s which killed hundreds of Americans. They are later responsible for the attack on the Jewish community in Argentina in the early 90s. Lately multiple Iranian operative cells have been exposed in Europe, trying to engage in assassinations.
They are bullying Gulf states. They are calling for the destruction of Israel every few weeks.
Iran is developing a ballistic missile program which is intended to threaten Western Europe (they are up to 4000km in range now with their latest missiles).
Finally, Iran hangs gays from cranes.
Now, why would anyone in their right mind oppose sanctioning this country?
All the Iranians I've met seem like completely normal people. I've never been to Iran, but from what I hear the young people in Iran aren't much different from the people here: They like to go to parties, listen to music, etc. The only difference is that they have to do it in hiding, and that they will get arrested when they do something like hold hands in public when they are not married.
Why would anyone approve of sanctions that make these people suffer even more?
And then, when these people start fleeing the country, asking for asylum, why do we turn them away?
However, and in general, if you have a nation state that does things like supporting terrorists (which Iran does seem to do), how do you try and compel them to stop those kinds of activities? Targeted sanctions are better - like targeting the overseas bank accounts of Russian oligarchs - but my understanding is that Iranian government officials don't have that kind of cash. It's a genuine question that I haven't heard a better answer for.
The particular idiocy that complicates things in this specific situation is that the sanctions helped the deal to happen, and that's been derailed by Trump's fragile ego wanting complete capitulation that he's never going to get.
For any such action you should consider reason and effect. Do you have a good reason here and do you expect good results, or are yoy hust trying stuff out?
For democracies there might be some consideration. But then you need to know how the individual people voted.
EDIT: Also you need to consider whether the politicians actually had the acts on their manifestos.
If you want to help them, you don't do so by cutting them access to the information. Iran is not a dictatorship, it's a theocracy. Like literally everywhere else, the more people are educated, the less likely they are to let religion govern their lives.
Young women are already protesting compulsory hijabs since December 2017: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017%E2%80%9319_Iranian_protes...
Now I understand that you're from Israel which makes you too affected to look at the problem objectively, but the best way to help young people under an oppressive regime is to stay the fuck away and let them do what they must. The worst thing you could possibly do is to give them additional boundaries that they have to go through to access the information from the outside.
Worked wonders with Russia, right? At least those young people could use foss to better target artillery strikes in Eastern Ukraine to pay off their mortage.
Also, how much of that FOSS was written by Russians anyway? It's not a nation with a math or programming talent shortage.
What, like overthrowing democratically elected governments, as they did in Iran? I really hope neoconservativism dies with the boomers, but I fear you're young.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh
It's not about some "end goal" its about both gov'ts using dirty tricks to further their own goals and the goals of the oligarchs that are associated with them.
My take: both are not worth my promo. US has, as other have pointed out, caused a lot more harm to a lot more people since WW2 then Iran has in the last 250 years.
So are the US's allies in the region, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
> They are deployed in Syria
So are the US, after bringing chaos to it by funding and training rebels for billions of dollars.
> They are sponsoring and arming Shiite militias in Iraq
Profiting from the chaos and destruction brought by USA's invasion of Iraq.
> They are supporting and funding the Houthis in Yemen who are responsible for the civil war
And how are the US not responsible for the civil war in Syria then?
> They are supporting, funding and arming Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, both of which are recognized terrorist groups intent on murdering Jews.
I call them resistance armies against illegal Israeli occupation. The "murdering Jews" thing is pure propaganda (although it is true that decades of prepotence and occupation have fueled religious hatred- but this is the product of inflicted violence, not the prime driver of Hamas).
> They are responsible for historical attacks on US forces in Lebanon during the 80s which killed hundreds of Americans
The US has armed and funded Saddam in a war that killed at least half a million Iranians.
> Iran is developing a ballistic missile program which is intended to threaten Western Europe
Iran is certainly not going to start a war with western Europe- these programs are defensive, are meant to create a deterrent (a mutually assured destruction) in case of attacks- which are very likely, as we're seeing these days. As a sidenote, I find it interesting how the US get hysterical at the idea of countries acquiring defensive weapons, for example the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft system.
> Iran hangs gays from cranes
This is true and obviously heinous, but it seems to be much rarer than it is generally thought. And sanctions and frontal aggression are not the way to improve the situation, it only further radicalizes the country.
Just to answer your question, I don’t really have a position myself on the topic:
Embargos target the general population, making things way more difficult for normal people who are just trying to live their lives. That can potentially create pressure for the people responsible for the evil actions and decisions you want to sanction, but as a side effect a lot more people are negatively impacted. That seems quite immoral to me.
[0] https://www.thedailybeast.com/as-iran-us-tensions-rise-with-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Lebanese_confl...
Israel and Saudi Arabia are perpetually lobbying for USA to destroy Iran. Fortunately at this time Trump is not interested in adding another $5 trillion to national debt to fight other peoples wars.
Lopsided politics? What is really interesting are Iranian the people on the ground, probably the most interesting population in the entire middle-east. They are actually far more liberally minded than most people imagine, they are very intelligent and capable and productive vs the region. I suspect that free from the Islamic-fascist dictatorship they would becoming extremely dominant in the economically and politically in very quick succession.
This is why Iran supports Hezbollah (Shiite) over other groups in Lebanon, Houthis (who are not Shiite but oppose the Sunni majority) in Yemen, Shiite in Iraq, Bashar Al Assad (who is Alawite himself but closely aligned with the Shiite and opposing the Sunnis in Syria). The only place where Iran supports Sunnis is Gaza, and that's done to primarily weaken Israel which Iran perceives as its primary threat to regional hegemony.
A failure to foresee this would be an error even if the USA was populated entirely by literal saints and angels; as it stands, human history is littered with so many genocides that it’s more like two drunks telling each other to stop looking at their pint. (And yes, my country is just as bad, and yes it doesn’t know that either).
Saudi does the same, by arming the opposite side.
> Finally, Iran hangs gays from cranes.
There are right wing fanatics in the "West" who openly are against LGBTQ, trolling them IRL and on social media. Some, calling for violence as well. Pushing those people to depression or cornering them in society, is as worse as hanging them.
> They are responsible for historical attacks on US forces in Lebanon during the 80s which killed hundreds of Americans
Like the US warship that blew up a civilian airliner and the officers who got medals for that?
Whatever you said about Iran, is applicable to the other side as well. There are no "good guys" or "bad guys" here. So, everyone has blood on their hands one way or the other.
The west should practice what it preaches to the word, not pick and choose.
You don't want yet another Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or Syria situation. Let the people of the nation decide their fate.
I for one, don't believe in any religion and it should have no place in this world. Many problems might go away.
Go find yourself some Iranian expat friends and ask them what it's really like to live under the rule of Mullahs, then come back and check if your moral relativism has taken a turn.
First, the Iranian state does not have a policy of finding and murdering gay people. You'll note that basically all press reports of the execution of homosexuals ultimately refer to acts of rape, possibly statutory. The argument, roughly, would be that this is a pretense, and certainly, Iran's legal system is very flawed, its laws regressive and offenses such as "enmity against god" ill-defined. Nevertheless, they are not ISIS, and merely being homosexual is not a crime.
Second, if you want to morally justify sanctions based on the idea of improving LGBT rights in Iran, find at minimum some evidence that there is significant percentage of those people in Iran who would welcome them.
Third, Saudi Arabia (see [0]). The west simply has no, absolutely no leg to stand on when it comes to the human rights argument. It is blatantly obvious that Iran could continue as it does with regard to its treatments of minorities, so long as it stops opposing our geopolitical interests, and starts to provide some benefits instead.
To summarize, this is not an issue of moral relativism. This is an issue of dishonesty and jingoism.
[0] https://www.out.com/news/2019/4/29/saudi-arabia-kills-5-afte...
There is no point to bring selective events/actinos. That's just memory bias and it's called selective omission. It's like if someone just brings the atomic bombing of Japan without context.
The irony is that, that is actually the regime we put in power in their country by our intervention. So whose fault is that?
Sanctioning is the best way to support right wings in those countries. It's the best propaganda tool we can give them.
What you want is to open dialogue, support democrat parties, make deal with them to let them show their people what benefits they get out of a deal. Which is exactly what P5+1 was trying to do before U.S. withdrawal by the new administration.
And please don't say that deal wasn't enough, because it is a suprise to see intelligent, educated person expecting to have a 100% reform in a country in one day and one step.
He's talking about totalitarian censorship, when most of the totalitarian censorship—and surveillance—in the West are done by Big Tech in cooperation with bureaucratic entities such as the EU and Great Britain. The USA too, but they're more interested in information. (However the US do currently "censor" traders from using foreign platforms that offer leverages that are too high according to US authorities, among other things. For their own good, of course...)
Oh and Big Tech also blocks Iran on many platforms, for obvious reasons. So not only does Iran have to deal with invasive surveillance and censorship from their government, but also from tech companies abroad. Talk about picking the short straw! He's right about one thing, though. Nobody cares about the people. Not in Iran or the West.
Edit: I knew such a comment would be costly, but next time, you could be the one who's affected. Think about it.
Sounds like the sanctions are working exactly as intended. No one in their right mind could possibly think that the sanctions would affect government officials or their families. Then again, most people in the US government are not in their right minds.
Let's build/clone fancy/popular services locally instead. Haven't we seen how big opportunity that is financially? Doesn't that bring freedom from both the controlfreak regime and sanction-imposing regime?
I am preparing to go to Iran and of this year to travel, and I have been researching about a lot of things. I was fascinated to learn about Daric Pay, an internal payment network that is trying to replace Visa/master.
But comparing to those services in the western countries, these services(dev tools and online resources etc) are just too immature and unstable and not well-documented,( I'm saying some opensource project from alibaba and so on ,and highly biased)
