Yes, there are fines for American companies if they do business with Iranians. That's how sanctions work as I'm sure you're aware. But the story doesn't stop there.
If an American finds out they are transacting with a sanctioned individual, or citizens of a sanctioned country like Iran or North Korea, the stakes go up: $1M USD fine and up to 20 years in federal prison. Oh and that's a personal risk -- you, the manager or executive in charge, and anyone else who is in the know on the transaction is now facing 20 years in federal pounding-in-the-ass prison if they don't immediately cease all communication and break off contact. Hence why they ghost you and remove your data from prod. It sucks, but I would do the same thing in that situation. Nobody should be expected to take that risk.
That's why you have these experiences :(
There are blanket sanction waivers (General License) by OFAC to allow certain things. There's also the possibility to get an OFAC license (as GitHub did.)
The real issue is there is little to no advantage (realistically no money to be gained from Iran) or even awareness (sometimes the cloud infrastructure bans Iran by default and you don't have enough users to even know that's the case to care.) The legal counsels would generally be conservative and advise against it; there needs to be someone from the business side, e.g. a product manager that cares enough to try to push back on the legal. There often is not or it is hard to justify the tiniest risk, hence you block.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is a financial intelligence and enforcement agency of the United States Treasury Department. It administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions in support of U.S. national security and foreign policy objectives.
Various tools hosted on Github can be considered dual-use (i.e. AES/TLS libraries). Furthermore, Microsoft was made to apply sanctions against Karim Khan of the ICC for his involvement in investigating the genocide of Palestinians; I doubt Microsoft would be granted an exception so they can serve Hamas' greatest supporter after that.
I don't know if Microsoft has applied for any exceptions, but even if they did, I doubt they'd be able to get them. That's on top of the probability of bad publicity ("Microsoft wants to cut deal with Iran") and the lack of incentive you mentioned.
https://www.politico.eu/article/microsoft-did-not-cut-servic...
If only this notion of personal criminal responsibility was applied to other types of private company criminality (2008 gfc, cartelization in many industries, the many private data "leaks", ...)
We simply love to inflict pain and suffering. This is why we circumcise, why we ear crop, tail dock, create animals, put people in solitary, etc.
So should we (people outside US) sanction these companies, so that they put the same pressure on US government to stop forcing them from applying sanctions?
* May 22, 2023, Meta €1.2 billion.
* July 22, 2024, Uber €290 million.
* April 23, 2025, Apple €500 million.
* September 4, 2025, Google €2.95 billion.I've seen this sentiment so many times from westerners. You all say this, and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.
Their authoritarian militaristic government that doesn't care for human rights.
If you apply the same standard to the North Korean citizens, that they should not be expected to "take that risk", they your country's sanctions are pure collective punishment with no strategic value. You just tortured people for fun.
"You all" is a weird way of putting it. I don't support my government levying sanctions on these countries, but I have zero power to change it.
It's funny, as the gist author points out that he doesn't support the actions of the Islamic Republic, and has no power to change it because it's minority rule by a theocratic dictatorship.
But even in the US, no one I've ever had the option to vote for (and who had even a remote chance of winning) would ever consider lifting these sanctions. So I am similarly powerless to change this situation.
I think sanctions are largely pointless if their stated goal is to get citizens to rise up and change their governments. Asking people to risk their lives (when you're not risking anything at all) is an awful thing to do, and this sort of thing isn't likely to work.
But it's probably not really that; the idea is to choke the economies of these countries so they can't do whatever Bad Thing the sanction-leviers are worried about (like developing nuclear weapons). How effective sanctions are at achieving that goal is an exercise left to the reader. And even if they are effective, there's a lot of collateral damage that hurts people who have no say in the matter.
That's a total non-sequitor.
GP stated that he will personally face prison time for going against the laws of his country.
Why would anyone risk jail time for you? For your countrymen? Why don't you risk jail time for some other country?
I think the argument is that you deprive belligerent companies from the resources they need to attack and harm others. The suffering their citizens endure is unfortunate, but why should Americans take the blame when Kim Jong Un is so obviously culpable?
That's the PR justification. The real one is "to hurt the countries and make them do as we say" and "because we can".
Sanctions are there to cut off 1-2% of GDP each year from the dictatorships' economies.
Over 30 years that turns countries into harmless (to the West) backwater shitholes.
The consequences towards the local populations are just a side-effect (sometimes wanted, sometimes not).
You cannot expect people outside of your dicatorship to prioritize your well being over their own safety. It's on you to fix your country. If you won't - people will isolate you to keep their countries safe.
Can't really blame them.
It is truly an unthankful job being the saviour of the entire world.
The justification is reduced financial capacity for war and similar atrocities.
At the same time, sanctions also work in other ways: they punish governments that break international norms, they send a signal to the world about what’s considered unacceptable, and they reaffirm shared values. That’s why they’re still used despite the harsh effects on ordinary people. They aren’t a perfect solution, but in Western thinking their role is to combine pressure, deterrence and symbolism, rather than just collective punishment for its own sake.
If I personally choose to boycott a sneaker brand because I have a firm belief that they run sweatshops in a foreign country, is that collective punishment? No, I'm just not supporting someone who doesn't align with my values. Even if, as a side effect, the workers won't be getting the pittance that they would have gotten from my purchase.
I dont't know what is this based on, but no, sanctions are needed to stop the other party from benefitting from economic activity, not to punish.
Is this really a US endeavor by policy?
The point of sanctions is to cripple the middle and lower classes, destroying a country's ability to fund a military. That actually makes it less likely for a dictatorship to get overthrown - the middle class is too poor to organise which is desirable from the West's perspective. Dictatorships are really bad at waging war effectively, they struggle to handle the complex logistics and are easier to distract and threaten.
But then it turns out that war is too dirty, cyber stuff isn't dirty enough. So what's left? Economics - sanctions. We've carried out 374 ultra important meetings, and traveled to 73 different countries, to prepare this critical 974th package of sanctions. This time it'll actually do something and be totally more effective than other 973, in spite of the fact that obviously the most impactful things are the first to be sanctioned.
It's obviously little more than theatrics, but it lets politicians feel powerful and like they're exerting influence on their enemies. And indeed, they may be responsible, at least in poorer countries for some people starving, which is then mental gymnasticed into 'Ah hah! They'll blame their government, overthrow them and become our ally, the people making them starve.'
It's really a shock that seems to basically never come to fruition. Well except when you're sanctioning a third of the planet [1], including many of the most unstable places in the world, and any time there's a regime change in these places - 'Ah hah! See? Sanctions work!' The fact that said change would often have happened in any case is kindly swept aside. It's akin to the joke that Zerohedge has successfully predicted 53 of the last 3 economic recessions.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_government_sanct...
The US government doesn't reflect the majority of Americans, at all. It reflects capital interests - which the majority of Americans are not. Majority of Americans are laborers.
What other options are there, except idly sitting by or invading?
> you
> you
You don’t understand what the word “you” means.
That's (usually) a secondary goal of sanctions, if even that. The primary is to restrict the regime's ability to fund its growth, stability and military operations.
Russia can no longer (that easily) sell its oil and gas? Great, that's less money to invest into rockets and drones and tanks against Ukraine. It's also less money in the pockets of the oligarchs.
Realistically, you can't really push the civilians of a country to revolt with sanctions, or bombing. As Carl Spaatz said:
> Morale in a totalitarian society is irrelevant so long as the control patterns function effectively.
No, I don't do this. I'm not in charge of the government. Who is "we" ?
The USA applied sanctions to the family members and law practice of a supreme court judge from my country literally yesterday. It's said this cut them off from hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
It really kills their champagne socialism nonsense. They destroy my country and then enjoy foreign developed nations on taxpayer dime. You have no idea how good it feels to see these "gods" get what they deserve. I'll be forever thankful to Trump for it.
also what company even can do???? its law from gov
Same thing with "sod" still being in common usage. Pretty bizarre to be allowed to get married in some countries now but there's still all these historical bits and pieces.
You either kill someone, or become someone's bitch on the first day, then you'll be alright.
(It's an Office Space reference, btw, but our prisons are genuinely inhumane and not rehabilitative.)
I was kind of surprised by the whole thing because he was currently employed at another company. We went so far in the process that he quit his other job and we had him in the office for his first day of work, had a big lunch with him and everything. We fucked him on that.
It's just a threat the fedcops get to use to force you to take a plea deal. It's basically a big boy version of how your local prosecutor behaves. Instead of filing BS charges that will never stick in an attempt to "mark it up to mark it down", the fedcops are more equal so they have
Every time you see someone on HN screeching about how we ought to have federal regulation and stiff penalties for whatever their pet issue is remember that this is what that looks like.
If only they applied something like this to the rest of the corporate world, companies would be far better behaved and polite
Let's be realistic here. There are no executives or board members who faced charges for prohibited transactions with Iran or NK. It's not like we don't have a steady stream of companies reporting that they inadvertently hired NK citizens remotely.
> Yes, there are fines for American companies if they do business with Iranians.
Edited for clarity (thanks bloak)
You just open company in Brazil or Argentina and you can purchase whatever you want. Before 1989 communistic countries were overcoming CoCom restrictions in this way. Russia is doing this successfully since 2014. Surely Iran, North Korea are doing the same, this is really a no brainer and today and it is not even hard or costly, as nobody needs to physically travel, money transfers go through Kaiman, Netherlands Antilles, City of London Corp., etc. Nobody is able to track them.
More. Nobody even tries to hide anymore. Germany is openly purchasing Russian oil, branded as "Kazakhstani", through Druzba pipe. The Netherlands is buying Russian gasoline branded as "Indian". France is buying Russian LNG and it is not event trying to pretend that it is not Russian.
We will wait very long for those who will pay this $1M fine or go to prison.
Ha ha ha, it's so funny and harmless to make fun of people in prison, because they all deserve it, right? And the US is a free country?
Sorry but this just makes me incredibly angry.
It certainly didn't seem like the commenter was agreeing with the way the government runs prisons or what happens in them. Again, maybe they do, and I just failed to see it.
This is also not a uniquely US-specific thing, lots of UK dramas have made similar jokes (for just one example, see [3]). Obviously I expect you would find those objectionable too, my point was just that it's not a US-specific thing -- humans have a tendency to make light of things like that as humour and some people understandably don't see the humour in it. Such is the human condition...
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBzvMLW0ii4 [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htCJTPu8GPE [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM8DfCgVWx8&t=19
Even more with Trump's current push to sanction the ICC.
But of course this veil can be pierced when it suits the administration, but not when it'd positively benefit the life of american citizens.
The "your decision" in that response is really off-putting. I know the law is what it is with sanctions like this. However, it is a failing of basic human empathy to blame other common citizens of a country for the actions of their government while we almost certainly do not endorse all the actions of our own government and would probably be a little upset if a foreigner assumed we did.
"American IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Israel so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians."
Sadly, in our world where everyone has a voice, you're going to get a lot of this. There's no avoiding the stupids.
I don't think anyone believes it is easy, but are sanctions not at least an incentive to try?
There are valid ways to punish a country for aggressive or oppressive actions - like sanctions - and there are non-valid ways - inherently blaming and then ostracizing every member of the country, for example. And when you take the position that, "If you don't agree with my actions, you're also part of the problem" you are not doing anything but causing people to get annoyed with you and your position, and reducing credibility for the groups you're trying to advocate for. In other words, you're doing more harm than good.
And this is to say nothing about how it is people that are chosen, not their individual choices. This is why it irks me when people are interviewed about their knowhow with respect to their political stance. It's basically irrelevant. They need a good read on the person of their choice, not a good read on the choices. If it was about a choice instead of a person, it would be a referendum, not an election.
"typical modern democracies" don't use the extremely terrible first past the post. It's mostly used in the UK and a few former colonies, but most of the world's democracies (even the flawed ones) have realised its shortcomings and have evolved past it.
Not really. The number of people who might change their minds and thus swing the result either way is indeed small. But it isn't accurate to say they are the ones that choose.
The people in guaranteed states/counties still choose; it's just that almost always choose the same answer.
But even that doesn't mean they can be ignored. They can be ignored at voting time, but before that political parties have to take them into account. They basically determine where the centre is. For example they are the reason the American centre is so much further right than the UK centre.
If you took American parties and held an election of them in the UK you would find that all those reliably conservative counties who you would say don't have any effect on the result are suddenly not so supportive of the right-wing option.
FPTP is still dumb and frustrating though.
The US also did not create political Islam, which predates the US by over 1000 years. Blaming the US for the problems of this region which has always had these problems is counter-factual. The problems of this part of the world - poverty, violence, religious oppression and dictatorships - predate western civilization as a whole, and in fact the oppressive empires from the Middle East / North Africa spread earlier and wider than western empires.
I always find amusing how the west always blames the people of the rivals "iranians", the "chinese", etc but when something is wrong with their side they blame an entity to detach themselves "the american government", "this administration", "nazi germany", etc
Govt proscribing access by law is something, but I cannot imagine a guy going out of the way to put ipblocks.
In everyday speech, people don’t carefully separate “the people” from “the state.” A French person talking about the U.S. usually says les Américains. A German talking about the French will just say die Franzosen — or, if they’re in the mood to tease, die Froschfresser. It’s only in news or diplomatic language that you see “the American government,” “the French government,” or “London” when referring to Britain.
The phrase “this administration” is mostly used domestically, by citizens talking about their own rulers. In Portugal you’d hear "este governo é uma merda", and in Spain the exact same sentiment — give or take a letter or two.
And “Nazi Germany” is only used when distinguishing regimes — Weimar vs. Federal Republic, Estado Novo vs. the Portuguese Republics, the French Fourth vs. the Fifth Republic, and so on.
That might make sense if the email stopped at "Iranian IPs", but it continued with "... due to your decision ..." (emphasis mine). That makes it sound like the author is personally responsible.
Also, collective punishment is literally as old as written history. I’m not sure if there are writings that provide a coherent moral theory of why it’s acceptable that you could call “collective responsibility” from those times, but it was the norm for thousands of years of warfare.
On the bright side, your average Iranian grandma can immediately work as a network engineer given the amount of experience she has with VPN protocols.
So, just an advice to all wannabe overseas-dictatorship-overthrowers - be nice, try to educate the people, don't make assumptions about person's wrongdoings and awareness based on their IP.
A good service with a strong message that Russian/Iranian is seeing on a regular basis does a lot more good than a service that throws a perfect insult just once. At least if your goal is to actually change something rather than throwing insults.
As a service owner currently looking at adding widescale blocks based on location... it's not a global business, so the downside of blocking an entire country is functionally zero and the upside of easily removing a tonne of compromised machines from the 'can try to DDoS us' pool is noticeable.
The intent was never to change your political stance. It's just plain old hate. Armchair political activists are always looking for "morally correct" excuses to be racist and xenophobic, and "your government did a mean thing so you as a citizen are responsible" is one of their favorites.
The problem is not with "bad" countries.
The problem is when a large amount of abusive traffic comes from a handful of countries, it's technically easier to block entire IP ranges and ASNs, than to filter and allow the small amount of well-behaved clients while blocking the rest. This is especially the case when the company has no commercial presence in these countries.
To be fair, the scenario you describe where countries are blocked purely out of political or personal reasons does exist, and I agree that it's morally wrong, even if it's the prerogative of any individual or company who they want to provide service to. But in my experience the blocking is usually motivated by abuse.
Abuse is becoming a much bigger problem lately, to the point that even large western providers are getting the same treatment nowadays. More and more I see people talking about banning Hetzner, OVH, DigitalOcean, and at any given time I can see several of their IP addresses in abuse reporting websites (spamhaus, abuseipdb).
What is the future here? I see no reason for those providers to tighten on abusers, given how long they’ve already ignored it. Pretty sure at some point you’ll have to have your own ASN and IP ranges to be able to do anything on the internet.
In my experience the reason is one of the following:
1. Following the local jurisdiction. By far the most common one, and one I have least questions for. At least not to the companies who implement this policy - someone over here already posted the consequences of not complying. Big companies often care to say "nothing personal, buddy, strictly business", but nothing more as in the OP's case with Microsoft.
2. Avoiding the attacks, as you said. I definitely agree they exist. And I can imagine every Cloudflare block page I've seen is because of that, but in my experience it's maybe 5-10% of all blockings I experienced.
3. Political activism. What my comment was about. It's always either individuals or small companies. It's always outrageously dumb and pathetic (obviously, except when it comes from an actual victim) and just does the job opposite to the proclaimed intention.
I can guarantee that your views would change very quickly if bombs started falling closer to where you sit and killing your friends and people you know.
Sanctions that worsen things for ordinary people really isn't going to change much in countries like this. It would be much more productive to try turn the army against the regime, or organize political and armed resistance.
If you want a democratic Iran, both the current government of Iran and its most powerful enemies will do everything they can to stop you.
Now I agree that the policies of the United States may not always be in the interest of the people from that part of the world, but a "mild" dictator like the one that the Saudi Arabia has or the one that Turkey has right now, these are better models sometimes. The SA of 50 years ago had no notion of human rights and severely under developed and could in no way support a democracy. Of course a dictatorship is not ideal, and the people of SA will have to pay a terrible price for it some day, but for now a dictatorship that "bows" to the west is not the worst thing either.
The actual intent of sanctions is to cause economic damage. In that respect this is an account of the sanctions working exactly as intended: they are making it harder for OP to work as a software developer, which makes it harder for the Iranian regime to benefit (directly or indirectly) from the efforts of software developers in Iran.
It's probably some kind of coping mechanism for not knowing anything about the people they're talking about, or they want to keep their world view nice and clean: we, the good guys, VS them, the uncivilized bad guys. It's as accurate as saying "all Americans are pro Maga white Christians because obviously if they weren't their government would be different"
A shower thought:
Wouldn't it make more sense if country A that considers sanctions against country B provided very "cushy" immigration laws for highly educated people from country B so that country A profits from these people's efforts while country B will suffer from a brain drain?
And by "hold power internally" I don't mean population uprising, I mean to keep the factions within the government (especially the military) united under the leadership by buying them out.
I believe increased population unhappiness is more of a side-effect that can be both beneficial (if it incites anti-government sentiment) or detrimental (if it incites nationalism) to the country imposing sanctions.
The current government of Iran is a direct result of the US's meddling in this way, so I'm not convinced this is a winning strategy either.
Like we did in Afghanistan? Because we lost Afghanistan in the same time we took the country, about two weeks.
Where did you get that data from and what do you mean by "hate" in quantifiable terms? (just being "unhappy" with outcomes of certain policies does not mean they would necessarily want to uproot everything for the better)
They have the power to choose who rules them if they want to. Nobody else does. Iranians are responsible for Iran's actions just like Russians are responsible for Russia's actions and Americans are responsible for America's actions.
USA is lucky to be in position where others are too afraid to apply this reasoning to them, knowing they do literally the same with their closest ally.
>I read hackernews on a daily basis and I visit lots of different websites regularly. I am almost always on my VPN as I am internally firewalled by the government and externally shooed because of the sanctions, so I am probably missing some of these heart-warming messages:
>>Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.
> I actually do not blame the people who do this. I think there is a fundamental misconception that people think because "Islamic Republic" has the word "Republic" in it, it must be a government of people in charge.
Total war and total information war are the side effects of the Democracy meme. Everyone from a taxi driver to a professor is assumed to be a political actor. The rationale runs something like this, "because you have a vote, you are defacto responsible for the actions of your state and political classes. Vote harder next time."
Meanwhile the individuals involved never explicitly consented to be governed. Even if there were a meaningful democratic process, it doesn't follow that the individual could withdraw consent. Ironically one of the suggested avenues for withdrawing consent in a democracy is to refuse to vote.
And if your're someone sliding into nasty leadership / government situation you have to realize there will be a consequence to that and that the perception of the ruling party can never be separated from the perception of the people.
It’s all pretty moronic if I’m honest. I really hope things get better for you.
Love how people in glass houses launch these stones.
I am very sorry that this kind of action affects you personally, as I am sure you have nothing to do with these attacks. However, filtering out Iranian, Russian and Chinese traffic in its entirety is the only way to protect my server from the majority of DoS and hacking attempts.
She does not support the current Iranian government, and neither do most of the people in Iran, according to her. But publicly expressing disagreement in Iran could have you disappear. That's why people are afraid to protest and speak out.
Regarding sanctions, it's not that hard to find and buy products from Iran. At least in the EU. What happens is neighboring countries import raw material from Iran, then put a label "Made in Pakistan", for example, and sell it. But those who know, can easily find and buy things like Iranian rice and spices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_statute
The EU has since the 1990s gone out of its way to support countries like Iran and Cuba against US/Israeli economic sanctions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_agains...
While I do agree with the sanctions against Iran for their aid to Russia in their aggression towards Ukraine, It's not like the US is completely innocent from funding or arming aggressors across the globe. How can the software world be mobilized to sanction the US for this? It can't and it won't because lots of the people in tech within the anglosphere have a vested interest in the US maintaining its power
Had no idea, interesting!
The answer would seem to me to be racism – he values Ukrainian lives more than Palestinians and considers non-white citizens in non-democratic countries responsible for their country’s actions, but white citizens of democracies innocent.
I think this is the most insidious part. These companies (on which you often depend for very important things, whether you want or not) will just ban you and delete your stuff, or even shadowban you, without (1) so much as an explanation beyond the Orwellian "you have violated our terms and conditions", and without (2) any possibility of appeal or customer support whatsoever.
This goes for google, discord, reddit, YouTube, github, notion, etc etc etc.
It's not looking too likely. You have Google's planned app developer verification, the UK's Online Safety Act, the EU's plans to interfere with E2EE, EU privacy rules causing sites to be riddled with popups, money laundering rules making banking increasingly more tedious, power concentrated in the hands of a few nation-state sized tech companies, countries becoming more authoritarian even in the West.
As an anecdotal example, I'm currently living/travelling between various EU countries, where a few years ago I would have expected a great deal of online freedom. Instead I now have to constantly change my VPN exit point to get around various restrictions depending on what site I'm using and what they have decided to block based on location.
If we can't even get these things right in the so-called free democracies of the West, what hope is there for the world in general? I'd like to be optimistic about this, but it's hard to find reasons to be.
Even the regime itself.. look I wouldn't to live there. But comparing it to somewhere like North Korea is ridiculous. Even by Middle Eastern standards it's not at the bottom.
This is not true. The sanctions definitely hurt countries like Cuba or Russia. They have a far harder time growing their economy. Cuba is stuck in the last century and often has total blackouts that last for days. Russia needs to beg countries like Iran or North Korea now for imports.
The sanctions significantly slow down Russian development and are more and more making it into just a mineral mining satellite of China. With time the weakened Russia would just split, and the large eastern part will go to China. Some midparts, with Turkic speaking population may even fall into Turkey orbit. Without the oil and gas rich East, the European part of Russia will be just a destitute village on the far margins of civilized Europe as it had been for centuries in the past.
Ask a russian about the price of fuel.
The European sanctions are more of a joke.
I you want to Ukraine to win donate to them directly instead of waiting for the cowardly politicians to get their act together.
I find that a lot of Westerners seem to have what I can only charitably describe as "romantic notions" of an uprising. Americans perhaps the most because of their national mythology around the Independence War.
---
unrelated but jesus christ I'm so pissed at west as a russian. For years London was welcoming russian oligarhs with their stolen money. Putin was invited to Finland even after 2014 invasion of Crimea. But you fuckers decided to ipmlement sanctions only after the 2022. So if I sell my appartment in Russia and want to transfer money to Europe now I would need to prove this is not money I pillaged from Ukraine. Absolutely disgusting. Supposedly Finland continues to buy russian minerals still, but as a russian I cannot cross the border with Finland, even if I have a visa.
All those software services rely on the payment processor to do business with the economically sanctioned users so they shouldn’t have done anything
Just like it's not the people it's the government and their policies, there, it's not the people, but the government and the policies here.
I remember having compliance trainings that explicitly spelled out sanctioned countries. They are being enforced by compliance and legal departments in every company. There's nothing personal on either side here.
https://the-decoder.com/anthropic-bans-companies-majority-co...
I grew up in a country occupied by Russians. I really feel for the Ukrainians. Currently, there seems to be a social contract between Putin and middle-class Russians from Moscow and St. Petersburg - they will let him bomb Ukrainian civilians, as long as he shields them from getting really hurt by that war. They can continue living pretty comfortably, as long as they go along with it. To me, this just feels wrong. Yes, it is hard to change anything in a dictatorship. I know that from personal experience. But I believe that ultimately, citizens have the responsibility for what their country is doing. And if what their country is doing is destroying another country, I am OK with making them feel a bit of heat.
I don't know that much about Iran, but the part I know is that they indeed make drones that pound Ukrainians, including their schools and hospitals. Do I feel certain sympathy for Iranian commoners, who might not make those drones voluntarily? Sure. If I were in their place, I would probably not dare to resist, and I would make those drones. But I feel more sympathy with Ukrainians. And if anything could be done to make it harder for Iranians to make those drones, we should try it. Even if it's unlikely to succeed. Even if it makes the lives of innocent ordinary citizens harder. I hope that if I were an Iranian, I would at least understand that.
Your second argument - that this is acceptable collateral damage - makes more sense, but it requires demonstrating that there is some connection between the specific measures and "making it harder".
2 prevalent groups of which are retired and people who moved there to make their ends meet, which will be complete around the retirement age.
> Yes, it is hard to change anything in a dictatorship. I know that from personal experience.
How many changes you did under dictators with actual armies, spy networks, chemical and nuclear weapons?
Analyze who have perpetrated most invasions ("military operations" if you like euphemisms) in the last 40 years and you'll be surprised who you'd need to "block" given your logic.
Of course, you won't block yourself because it's convenient to be a jingoist when it doesn't affect you.
All sanctions are designed to hurt civilians, so that they may overthrow their government. Just a bullying tactic by the US with zero moral justifications, despite how it's framed by the media.
That requires some blind faith to believe. In that I don't think those applying them really expect overthrowing the government to result. I would guess sanctions are designed to hurt and weaken, to make them less of an adversary. Although that's a harder sell, so doesn't get presented that way.
Objectively untrue. Many of the Russian sanctions, for example, targeted Putin’s inner circle.
I’m aware there are consequences to sanctions, and the way they are implemented is often half-assed or hypocritical (e.g. the way that russian oil still flows) but to drop all sanctions…
Is that not like saying boycotts hurt employees who had nothing to do with the decisions so we should never boycott?
Their government, quite literally, does not represent them, their views, nor their interests.
If you want to fix “the Iran problem”, help their people as much as possible.
Like burying a child feels, or your beatmaker got drafted?
This is an absolutely mental take assigning blame on every civilian of a country. Sadly in probably his worst take, Linus Torvalds also said something in these lines while banning all Russian developers. While the action could be justified, this attitude is never reasonable, and I say that as a Finn with the same opinion about Putin's war of aggression as Linus has.
When a service drops a customer for _any_ reason, even if it was the customers own fault, it should become the absolute norm and a the minimum thing that the service would trigger the same thing they'd do when if the user triggered a manual data export off the service. Even for something relatively simple, like for example I didn't log in to my Spotify account for x amount of years and they disabled my account. The only way I could get my collected albums back was through support, and if I had been unlucky, they'd just deleted all my data.
This is NOT something that should be the user's responsibility. There is no norm for automating data exports off services, hell even Google makes you go through menus every time. Maybe time for EU to be useful again?
Your country is sanctioned. You are asking people to put their own freedom at stake so that you can have a Notion account.
Iran is supplying Russia with drones to attack Ukraine. The sanctions against Iran might be hurting people who do not deserve it, but they aren't some unreasonable act of aggression and you are complaining about your Notion account?
When you grant access/resources to expats of a hostile country, you have to limit them as if they were agents of the foreign country. Even if they like your country, you make them vulnerable to threats of torture/imprisonment of their loved ones back home.
Do they not understand that, instead of helping these people connect to the outside world and improve their life and their country, they are actually increasing the poor conditions and helping the regimes they are fighting against?
The idea is to get the population to put pressure on the leaders.
Not sure if it has worked, but I am sure Russia is unhappy with the unrest that sanctions have caused.
At this point it should be obvious to everyone, that western money is (transitively) keeping all the worst regimes alive.
People stopped buying south African stuff, as an apartheid boycott, can we get some china boycott going?
Do those sanctions even work? North Korea still builds nuclear weapons, Cuba still has a communist government, Iran is still a theocratic regime. You don’t start revolution by trade embargo. You start it by sending more jeans and heavy metal records.
Well, you mentioned "North Korea still builds nuclear weapons," but didn't mention Iran having them. So, something worked. It wasn't 100% just sanctions... But the sanctions certainly hampered their ability to acquire effective air defense.
(The NK sanctions were too late — NK had already started nuclear weapons testing before the sanctions were levied.)
Off the top of my head: I don't think the USSR is still around, and it largely collapsed due to economic pressure; Libya abandoned its nuclear program due to sanctions; and apartheid in South Africa ended largely due to sanctions.
They don't always work, but I've never heard of jeans and heavy metal working either, as nice as that would be. Belarus has plenty of both, but Lukashenko's been in power since the 90s.
Now it's just Iran/Cuba/North Korea, but you're essentially letting the increasingly aggressive American government decide who can or cannot publish software. The Americans are not afraid of adding their political enemies from allied countries to the sanction list, as can be seen when they decided to go after the judge in the Israel genocide case. Who knows who will be next now that they're blatantly cracking down on free speech.
The Apple app store/Google Play/Microsoft Store are great conveniences, but they must never be the only way to access software on your device. Apple's EU exception falls short for still requiring an Apple account to pay fees that no judge will accept when the first lawsuit hits. Sure, Epic Games has offered to pay those fees just to spite Apple, but Epic can only pay those fees to people they're allowed to pay.
(...)
That way you don't lose their data just in case sanctions are lifted
It feels like I have to own all my data and not trust companies before it's decided I can no longer access my own data.
> Russian IPs are blocked here, due to your unjust and unprovoked War against Ukraine. You are responsible for the rape, kidnap and massacre of innocent civilians.
Which is to me an absolutely bonkers statement, clearly made by someone who has never even tried to research anything about my country. Someone who was clearly born into a democratic society and has lived their whole life in it. And has probably never traveled to countries with oppressive regimes and never made any friends there.
It's nothing but performative bullshit.
Damn ... :/
Yes it's annoying that people disabled your access because of your location, but at the end of the day it is what it is. US companies get hefty fines if they do business with Iran.
The only thing they can do is to make dictators more popular and provide them with an excuse for their economic and political failures.
When someone in Cuba is denied something because of Sanctions, they are not going to blame the Castro family, they are going to think, "Hey, Fidel was always right! those Americans are just a bunch of sadist psychopaths that are trying to destroy my country.
In general, a good rule of thumb in life, is that whatever policy people like John McCain or Lindsey Graham defend, the right position is the exact opposite of theirs.
But what you're saying is that sanctions are more of a marketing issue when it comes to who is blamed?
> Economic failures
Hmmm
First, there is the law, and many jurisdictions forbid me from providing any services to individuals and/or businesses in certain countries. See other comments here for details, but these are serious matters.
Second, there is my moral beliefs. I go through life trying to draw a moral line and if something is beyond that line, I take action. Your line might be different. You might be a forever-whataboutist, avoiding taking any action and always saying "but what about X or Y?", trying to point out that I am inconsistent in my actions or beliefs. Well I don't subscribe to whataboutism and I believe it is the cause of much of today's world problems. So I refuse to provide service to some countries, because I cannot stand idly while genocide happens. If your country is involved in genocide, target killing of civilians, or actively helps another country to do so, I do not want to deal with you.
Some will say that individuals are not responsible for actions of their countries. I disagree. For better or worse, the passport you hold brings with it certain benefits and obligations, and ties you to a country. That's how we agreed to run this world. If your country commits horrific crimes, it's time to take action: oppose the authorities, escape the country, apply for asylum, renounce your citizenship. Yes, I know all these are unpleasant and dangerous. So are the bombs your country is dropping onto my friends right now. Taking the "but individuals are not responsible" stance means that I have to watch as some people from countries that are killing my friends live well in safe places, standing on the sidelines and waiting things out, while keeping the option to return to their country once things blow over. Writing blog posts about the finer points of modern Apple design while people get raped and murdered by the army of their country. I don't feel that is right. There must be consequences if your country commits atrocities. Don't like the consequences? Don't let your country get to the point that it commits atrocities.
There was a lot of interesting stuff went into the article:
1. Microsoft:
> Back when I was a student, I got access to the Microsoft Imagine, and as a result, I got access to the Microsoft Store as a developer.
Then:
> Microsoft deleted my app, my developer account, and all those comments on my app supporting me and suggesting ideas on how to improve the program.. but I assume it's because of the sanctions.
Here, I got a novice question: Knowing this individual is from a sanctioned country, Why you are allowing him in the first place to put a lot of work to build an app but, after having some success, you destroyed him entirely?!
Also, suggesting ideas on how to improve the program after deleting my account is one of the most hilarious things I have ever read. It is a strong indicator that these emails are just templates built automatically with no soul or human touch. Yes, you heard it right: you are just a row in a table!.. but you still manage to have a PRIMARY_KEY!
2. Notion:
> Since It has been suspended permanently, there's still no option to get it back even by going outside those countries. Sorry for the Inconvenience. Take care.
Same as above! Why letting me build a base of data then one day, you delete it permanently without prior notice or the ability to export it then you apologize for the Inconvenience and tell me to take care of myself!
3. Mike Cardwell:
> I read hackernews on a daily basis
Oh, this made me relief a little bit! I hope Hacker News is neither being banned in any country nor blocking traffic from any country.
> Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.
Blaming then punishing an ordinary citizen for arming a foreign country to kill civilians without clear evidence is so dumb.
Also, this reminds me of this post entitled Namecheap: Russia Service Termination (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30504812):
Unfortunately, due to the Russian regime's war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine, we will no longer be providing services to users registered in Russia.
> However, later, GitHub announced that github is now available in Iran
Good News! read here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25648585
5. TIL
TIL about this 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons status code. I won't ever return this code for my websites, everybody, from everywhere, is welcome :)
Finally, I have a dream.. the dream to live to the day where a true open internet sees the light where the entire world have unrestricted access to the same online resources.
Let's hope the next gen protocols will make censorship impossible, especially by law.
Then in 1962 suddenly another motive was added :USSR-missiles. The US blockade of Russian warships probably loaded with ballistic missiles on their way to construction sites in Cuba, was the closest brink of war yet. My Dad (ARMY) was on alert and packed to go.
With that resolved and no USSR missiles in Cuba the working motive for opposition fell back on (because Castro, Communism) and its economy was hobbled for years until neutral worldwide investors besides the USSR established ties. To this day Cuba is still on the edge with the lines shifting back and forth.
As has Iran since the Shah dynasty ended and American hostages were taken. So Cuba and Iran have lines stretching back into the distance. Probably you and I are young and it all seems so ancient. But Iran is a wealthy country now and (like us and the CIA) and it is now 'on our watch' to make sure money is not being funneled into the wrong places.
This nuclear thing annoys me but I'm a 'radical'. Aside from sweetheart deals and that 'other' country the US gave The Bomb by supplying their initial fissile material... since the USSR split anyone with MONEY has been able to acquire 1,2,3,+ bombs if they want them. "So and so is two weeks from having a Bomb" is generic Boomer slop to stoke fear and justify anything. And by all means if you have uranium, centrifuge uranium. And build out nuclear power.
Don't reply with an answer and place yourself in the crosshairs. But think on or find out for yourself, what number between 3% and 99% was Iran aiming for? If the number is on the higher side don't think in terms of [stupid] nuclear war, think in terms of money being wasted and having to deal with the most sordid people in the world to sell it. A bad direction. Things like this are both funny and sad, and hint at a world that might have turned out differently, better ( https://web.archive.org/web/20150518180531/http://en.wikiped... ). Time to revisit roads we had not taken.
for Iranians it's the same. and it's ground truth.
the sanctions actually are designed to push the people of Iran to change their mind and overthrow their gov. it's easier than starting a full-blown war against Iranian that will cause damage or kill U.S soldiers' lives. the sanctions are deliberately implemented to target the people and force them to follow the will of the whom established them.
