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Isn't intent of sanctions to weaken the adversary? Providing services, even free-tier (or, may be, especially so), to sanctioned countries is exactly the opposi

Isn't intent of sanctions to weaken the adversary? Providing services, even free-tier (or, may be, especially so), to sanctioned countries is exactly the opposite of that.

londons_explore 2y ago
It makes US service providers, like Google and Amazon, very unattractive for businesses that require worldwide coverage - for example wikipedia. I would argue that for unpaid services (for example serving up web content), we should not be applying sanctions. Those specific sanctions are so easy for the iranians to work around (VPN), and so damaging to our businesses (no worldwide service).
- golergka 2y ago
  > It makes US service providers, like Google and Amazon, very unattractive for businesses that require worldwide coverage You know what is much more unattractive to these businesses? Getting on the wrong side of the US government. And honestly, I don't see any business (except for ones in Russia, China and Iran) changing provider because they don't provide service to Iran. > damaging to our businesses (no worldwide service) I'm confused, are you arguing here for allowing free-tier services under the sanction regime, or for getting rid of sanctions against Iran altogether? If it's the latter, then the argument is self-consistent. But if it's the former, then you're effectively saying that an american business which currently doesn't provide any services to iranian customers would instead prefer to provide free-tier services for them without any way to get them to paid tier, and that doesn't make any sense. If you know that users from a certain region would always be at 0% conversion, you would get nothing by providing them with a free tier.
  - londons_explore 2y ago
    Imagine wikipedia was looking for new hosting. They consider Google cloud, but then reject it because GCP cannot serve users in Iran, and Wikipedia's policy is to be globally available. Google loses worldwide revenue from all of wikipedia. (I have met multiple companies who have dismissed GCP for this reason. Even companies with no current business in Iran might one day want to expand there, so don't want to make infrastructure choices which lock them out).
input_sh 2y ago
The adversary is the government and businesses associated with the government, not all of the 90 million people living in Iran.
- golergka 2y ago
  As long as government controls the country, it's the country as a whole. Because that's where the government gets its resources.
  - input_sh 2y ago
    That's just not true. You don't know what you're talking about. I encourage you to skim through the sanctions. I promise you that you will find plenty of exemptions telling you not to block every Iranian citizen from communicating, not to block them access to information, not to block them from free-to-use services, not to prevent them from traveling etc etc. If you just cut the whole country off the internet, how do you expect them to organise towards overthrowing the government? Via carrier pigeons?

Isn't intent of sanctions to weaken the adversary? Providing services, even free-tier (or, may be, especially so), to sanctioned countries is exactly the opposite of that.

londons_explore 2y ago

It makes US service providers, like Google and Amazon, very unattractive for businesses that require worldwide coverage - for example wikipedia. I would argue that for unpaid services (for example serving up web content), we should not be applying sanctions. Those specific sanctions are so easy for the iranians to work around (VPN), and so damaging to our businesses (no worldwide service).

golergka 2y ago
> It makes US service providers, like Google and Amazon, very unattractive for businesses that require worldwide coverage You know what is much more unattractive to these businesses? Getting on the wrong side of the US government. And honestly, I don't see any business (except for ones in Russia, China and Iran) changing provider because they don't provide service to Iran. > damaging to our businesses (no worldwide service) I'm confused, are you arguing here for allowing free-tier services under the sanction regime, or for getting rid of sanctions against Iran altogether? If it's the latter, then the argument is self-consistent. But if it's the former, then you're effectively saying that an american business which currently doesn't provide any services to iranian customers would instead prefer to provide free-tier services for them without any way to get them to paid tier, and that doesn't make any sense. If you know that users from a certain region would always be at 0% conversion, you would get nothing by providing them with a free tier.
- londons_explore 2y ago
  Imagine wikipedia was looking for new hosting. They consider Google cloud, but then reject it because GCP cannot serve users in Iran, and Wikipedia's policy is to be globally available. Google loses worldwide revenue from all of wikipedia. (I have met multiple companies who have dismissed GCP for this reason. Even companies with no current business in Iran might one day want to expand there, so don't want to make infrastructure choices which lock them out).

input_sh 2y ago

The adversary is the government and businesses associated with the government, not all of the 90 million people living in Iran.

golergka 2y ago
As long as government controls the country, it's the country as a whole. Because that's where the government gets its resources.
- input_sh 2y ago
  That's just not true. You don't know what you're talking about. I encourage you to skim through the sanctions. I promise you that you will find plenty of exemptions telling you not to block every Iranian citizen from communicating, not to block them access to information, not to block them from free-to-use services, not to prevent them from traveling etc etc. If you just cut the whole country off the internet, how do you expect them to organise towards overthrowing the government? Via carrier pigeons?