
How is it like to be a dev in Iran - daanavitch
https://shahinsorkh.ir/2019/07/20/how-is-it-like-to-be-a-dev-in-iran
======
misingnoglic
My heart breaks for these devs. I've been able to launch a successful
development career specifically because I was born in the US (and my parents
left Iran). If I was the same person in a different geographic area I'd be
struggling under sanctions.

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.

~~~
thedevilslawyer
Isn't the point of sanctions to cause frustration by restrictions?

~~~
trilila
It is. But you see, those hit hardest by sanctions are neither the cause of
trouble nor anti western. Those are usually people like you and i, while the
“elite” can smuggle in whatever they want and access whatever they want. Not
only that but regular folk is weakened and cant stand a chance against the
well fed government. No sanctions means greater exposure to our way of life
and thus an easier path for grassroots change. If anything, i’d make
government owned proxies available to iranians and chinese and all those
oppressed so they can access censored content. I’d also make it easier to
smuggle in technology so they can show others what they are missing on by
supporting their criminal governments.

~~~
gdy
There is a Soviet joke, on unrelated subject, but relevant.

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."

~~~
trilila
Not a joke tho. For some people that's what it meant in communist east Europe.
But good thing you brought this into discussion. Communist east Europe didn't
have sanctions against, and as a result people would smuggle all sorts of
western goods, up until they figured out: hey the politruks have all those
fancy things, while we are told "west bad", "west capitalist corrupt", we
should overthrow them. An oversimplification, but that's how it works. Regular
folk get to learn that they have to struggle to access the modern world
because of their OWN government, up to the point where they figure out "screw
it, let's join the free world, i want my fancy cars and my fancy colour tvs,
life is too short to praise a false prophecy".

------
throwaway-ba9
Throwaway account for obvious reasons.

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.

~~~
throwaway-klsdj
This is a good point. To add a slightly different perspective, I work for a US
company that routinely has to deal with cyber attacks by Iranian
professionals, probably government sponsored. I think most people don't
realize how incredibly serious this is, and how basically there is already a
global war being fought. And the nations with the most freedom have the most
to lose.

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.

~~~
h0l0cube
> I work for a US company that routinely has to deal with cyber attacks by
> Iranian professionals, probably government sponsored.

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.

~~~
stickfigure
I don't think Stuxnet forfeits the moral high ground. It was narrowly focused
on attacking a specific military project. It's exactly the kind of thing I
want the CIA (or whatever) doing, especially if the alternative is sending
bombs.

State sponsored attempts to hack public network infrastructure fit into a
totally different category. These are not the same.

~~~
A2017U1
Before stuxnet Iran had absolutely no cyber capabilities. In the years
following it they have built some of the most formidable offensive teams on
the planet.

There's plenty of literature on this. Whoever created stuxnet created another
monster too.

~~~
stickfigure
You imply that without Stuxnet, Iran would not have developed these
capabilities. That seems improbable. At some point every "bad actor" is going
to realize the possibilities of cyber warfare - even if just for ransomware
revenue - and want in on the gold rush.

~~~
A2017U1
I'll bet everything I have that they wouldn't have anywhere near the
capability they now have in $currentyear after stuxnet.

From what we know the US was doing everything possible to be restrained about
this stuff, keep it on the downlow as is the way, and history has shown they
were very much right. It's insane what's happened in the aftermath.

We created a monster. We really did. It's clear to anyone watching.

------
jasonhansel
> not all servers like to get traffik from TOR. For instance, CloudFlare
> annoys when you are accessing its servers through TOR.

 _This_ is why you shouldn't ban Tor. In some places, it is absolutely
necessary.

~~~
wp381640
it's also why you shouldn't abuse Tor with web scraping or other actions that
lead to sites blocking it

~~~
juskrey
This is why you shouldn't use CloudFlare, whose good intentions lead to not so
good places

~~~
judge2020
When 80% of traffic from an IP is malicious and the other 20% is regular
traffic, but both sources look like the same traffic (impersonating browser
headers, sometimes running headless chromium), what else can you do? Cookies
and stateful cookie-like objects, such as privacy pass.

Can anyone report how well privacy pass works nowadays?

~~~
kodablah
> When 80% of traffic from an IP is malicious and the other 20% is regular
> traffic, but both sources look like the same traffic (impersonating browser
> headers, sometimes running headless chromium), what else can you do?

Accept the traffic, taking the bad with the good. We all know the ills of
visitor profiling regardless of effectiveness.

~~~
ohithereyou
That's an easy position to take when you personally do not bear the expense of
the extra bandwidth, increased hardware needed to ensure acceptable response
times, and cleanup/reputation damage when you are compromised.

All of these things have a cost, and they should be balanced against the
benefit seen by allowing open access.

------
mariojv
I was a little surprised that Docker even returns text indicating why the
request was blocked with the 403 status code. I wonder if there are any
services trying to comply with sanctions in this way that are using response
code 451
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_451](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_451))....

------
milemi
I can’t think of a historical example of economic sanctions even moving the
situation toward the putative goal of regime change in the target country, let
alone achieving that goal.

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.

~~~
throwaway-klsdj
I'm not sure the entire plan is to get the country to do what you want. It's
also about not supporting your enemies. Why send them raw materials, hardware,
software that they will then use to fight against you? This seems to have
worked for the countries you listed and a few more with the possible exception
of Iran. They are much weaker than they could have been and are therefore not
as significant a threat.

~~~
milemi
That rings true to me, and it sounds very cruel and depressing. By that
measure it hasn’t worked with North Korea either, slowly but surely they have
turned into a significant threat to US.

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.

------
rb808
The modern computer world is so interwoven in the internet now. It was only 20
years ago when every company I worked had physical computers, no internet
access (except email) and every piece of software had to be installed from CD.

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.

~~~
chibg10
This is also a subject of intense interest to me. We're in uncharted territory
here, and the most relevant historical example imo is WW1 where all major
participants began the war without giving any real thought to oil and 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).

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.

~~~
Gibbon1
Yes!!! The current world power structure is underlain by the control of oil.
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.

And just like 1914 the dominant powers are clueless.

~~~
ohithereyou
GP posted:

> 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.

------
pizza
Effects of sanctions totally slide off the elite and shit all over the poorest
members of a society.

~~~
azimuth11
It is sad the sanctions have that side effect. Hopefully it’s enough to affect
some change in a hostile country led by an oppressive elite.

~~~
cyphar
Sanctions (in the form that the US is applying them to Venezuela and Iran) are
a form of economic warfare. The idea is to cause economic instability by
stopping (oil) exports, and thus cause general instability. Now, there are
mismanagement arguments you could make but it would be naive to ignore the
massive effects that US (and importantly, US ally) sanctions have on a country
that relies on exports.

The effects on Iran are not side-effects. They are clearly the primary goal.

~~~
lonelappde
The sanctions hurt from the bottom up. The elites who own the economy lose
some money but they are eatill comfort.

~~~
adventured
The elites in countries like Iran and Venezuela derive all of their wealth by
theft from the bottom 99%, without exception.

Just take a look at the extraordinary pile of wealth and power the fake
theocracy in Iran has thefted away via Setad (about $100 billion stolen from
the Iranian people). Reuters has done great investigative reporting on this
over the years:

[https://www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part1](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part1)

It turns out Khamenei is nothing more than a Putin-like kleptocrat, a thief,
using religion as a cover for building a massive corporate empire on the backs
of the poor Iranian people (from which he aggressively steals property).
Everything about modern Iran makes sense once you read about Khamenei and
Setad.

The people in the bottom 99% are the only ones who can change these countries.
If you could take most of the personal wealth of the members of eg the Maduro
regime in Venezuela, it would change absolutely nothing. They ultimately rule
by gun, through military control. The majority - including large sections of
the military - has to turn against the leadership to spur change.

Countries have no moral obligation to support the Maduro or Khamenei regimes
(which is what happens when you freely trade with them and prop them up
through hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign investment and oil
purchases). Someone will reply to this and say: well the US is exactly the
same as Maduro and Khamenei (or worse). The only proper response to that is:
ok, sure, boycott or embargo the US, give it your best shot.

------
knowThySelfx
I do not know how others feel. But I feel resentment towards embargoes (and
calling their poodle countries to follow suite) placed on other countries just
because they don't tow your line. Going to Iran's backyard and threatening
them and then cry when they retaliate (a pretext to start war)...its
so...pathetic. In fact most of the 20th century wars were started using this
kind of baiting.

~~~
kweks
Most of the comments below you are correct in the scope of the last 10 years,
but in the context of the last 50 are absurd.

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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat)
[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution)

~~~
saiya-jin
Travelling in Iran is amazing experience - completely unspoiled from tourism,
amazing history left and right, very warm and welcoming people, almost
everybody speaks OK english (and most signs are dual farsi/english). For an
experienced travelers / backpackers, this is one of the best places to
experience these days.

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.

~~~
PMan74
> very warm and welcoming people

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.

~~~
aasasd
Many people would probably use ‘portable’ software (in the Windows-world
sense) in internet cafes, but I imagine most cafes forbid USB sticks or at
least running your apps.

Even if a cafe uses some sort of sandbox environments that are wiped after
each visitor, there's a danger that you'll bring in a ‘Scriptkiddie 2019’
exploit pack on the stick.

------
schpaencoder
I feel for you and I know that normal people are always the victims of
sanctions, not the privileged and rich. I hope one day your people will be
free. Sincerely.

------
Iv
Am I the only one to see this as a positive side effect of sanctions?

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.

~~~
grrowl
The user experience on Tor is not great at the best of times. I can't imagine
trying to do something like `docker pull` or `npm install` over it, let alone
technical research.

~~~
Iv
Having tried to use a censored internet in China, I suspect it beats the
alternative.

------
steve19
"People are dying due to absence of medicines. People are starving. The
economy system is falling apart and the politicians and their children are all
abroad! None of them have any sense about what is going on the streets."

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.

~~~
m0zg
That's kind of by design. What other effect do you think the total economic
embargo would have? It's not like they're some super advanced country that's
independent of anybody else for tech.

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.

~~~
h0l0cube
> it's working

The last deal for de-nuclearization already worked, but it was inexplicably
terminated.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_nuclear_deal_framework](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_nuclear_deal_framework)

~~~
cm2187
Explications: supporting war in Yemen, Al Assad, Hezbollah, etc.

~~~
h0l0cube
And yet none of those explications were cited by Trump. They would seem like
obvious rhetorical wins for populist support of the fight against terrorism. A
more honest explanation would have to ask what the US government stands to
gain from renewed sanctions of Iran.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_the_Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Action#Political_influences_and_decisions)

------
nasir
Ten years ago when I still lived in Iran I was a wizard working my way around
the "filternet". I had even taught my mom to setup a socks proxy through an
SSH tunnel!

~~~
dunstad
I do this at work to get around the company firewall. Pretty useful technique!

------
nixgeek
Seems like it could be dangerous just to blog about these activities if you
live in Iran?

~~~
eternalban
Unless you are not in Iran and this is propaganda.

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!!!"

~~~
gruez
>Who resolves "shahinsorkh.ir" for your browser? DNS lookup says 104.24.126.79
and that is in California, United States, and not Iran.

because it's cloudflare

~~~
eternalban
Exactly. And that is where the trail stops. that ".ir" is worth precisely zip
as far as verifiable facts are concerned.

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...](https://douran.com/fa-
IR/Dourtal/1/page/%D8%B5%D9%81%D8%AD%D9%87-%D8%A7%D8%B5%D9%84%DB%8C)

------
smnrchrds
Dear devs,

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.

~~~
mattigames
Or... maybe developers should not play the games the Iran goverment want them
to play and every effort should go towards throwing the current dictatorship
not to stop using what they want us to stop using?

~~~
seqizz
Oh sorry, how many times did you overthrow your government? Any tips?

~~~
mattigames
My government doesn't need overthrowing yet, so no tips over here; there are
some excellent books about it tho.

------
mpoloton
Definition of terrorism according to Wikipedia:

"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.

~~~
keiferski
The answer to your question is in the text you quoted: intentionally
indiscriminate violence as a means to create terror. Economic sanctions may be
justified or unjustified, moral or immoral, but they are distinctly different
from indiscriminate violence.

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.

~~~
mpoloton
I didn't say it is "Terrorism" I said "Economic Terrorism". Economic sanctions
by definition are indiscriminate. Now there is a shortage of some cancer and
MS medication in Iran and people are dying because of it. Even though the
medications are not sanctioned, the financial transactions are sanctioned and
these medications cannot be purchased easily. How isn't this violence?
According to the UN, sanctions on food and medication is a crime against
humanity. We have seen this period of sever sanctions on Iraq in the disguise
of oil for food program. We know how it ended.

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.

~~~
yyyk
"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"

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'.

~~~
mpoloton
Just refer to John Bolton, you can find many instances. He gave a talk for MEK
which was in the US terrorist group list.

~~~
yyyk
Surely you can provide one.

It's true that Bolton argued war is best option several years before joining
this administration, but that's not your claim. Your claim is that he (or some
other official) said the purpose of the sanctions is to make the common people
suffer, and I can't any statement to that effect.

~~~
mpoloton
Yes, you are right they didn't literally say that because in that case it
would be legally troublesome. I think it is childish to think that this is not
pure coercion either to the negotiation/surrender table or public unrest. By
the way, Bolton didn't just advocate war/unrest years ago. It was last year
[1].

I understand the importance of being exact, but by being pedantic in a
political context without considering motivations and effects is
trivialization.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cenpiO6LMpE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cenpiO6LMpE)

~~~
yyyk
Ok, so you don't have a reference. If we take the admin at its word, they say
they want a better deal.If you believe Bolton doesn't follow orders, than he
seeks war. The one thing nobody of any disposition ever said they seek is
'regime change'. That's because a ground invasion is inconceivable and
homegrown revolution unlikely when it's the regime with all the guns.

------
ALittleLight
It seems like some of those obstacles are also opportunities. For example, the
point about not being able to get a MasterCard or Visa and therefore not being
able to use AWS makes me think there's probably an opportunity for a neat
business renting out VMs to Iranians with whatever payment they can use.

Of course AWS does a lot more than just rent VMs, but it seems like a
relatively straightforward part of the business to copy.

~~~
empath75
Being on the wrong side of us sanctions is not a happy place.

~~~
ALittleLight
I was imagining this as an opportunity for Iranian devs, who are, presumably,
already on the wrong side of US sanctions.

------
ilaksh
Its an ongoing war. Just without bullets. My concern is that people will see
him mention things like censorship and for them that will justify an invasion
that results in mass killing and destruction.

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.

~~~
emilsedgh
Iranian living in the U.S. here.

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.

~~~
ilaksh
Do you think it is a partisan issue or do you think it has to do with long
term military strategy such as the Strait and fossil fuels? My guess would be
they essentially want total military submission, something like a base inside
the country.

~~~
mars4rp
AIPAC has a great influence in both parties.

And don't forget the military industrial complex and its influence to break
the peace and sell more weapons.

~~~
kaveh_h
AIPAC has influence because politicians wants perception of an ally to
”defend” and so have better support for their policies. This is not about real
genuine support for Israel.

------
gdfasfklshg4
I notice that doubleclick won't serve to Iran. A very small silver lining to
the huge black cloud of sanctions...

------
reilly3000
There are full data sets out there of stack overflow and Wikipedia, etc. After
reading this I’d love to get that in the hands of more Iranians and others.
It’s most likely not illegal to deliver the actual data as long as its not via
the web.

~~~
mrweasel
One of his complaints is that they can't even reach Docker docs and just a few
minutes ago I ran into an issue where Ubuntu didn't have a manual page for a
build in command. We have been so accustomed to having access to the internet
all the time that systems no long ship with the required documentation.

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.

------
tehjoker
While the Iranian regime is somewhat less than perfect, the US has no business
interfering in that region. The establishment reason for tensions is to
protect (nuclear armed) Israel and oil (with some other knock on oil based
relationships like SA). Guess what though, Israel has nukes and we desperately
need to stop using oil as soon as possible. Why not just drop sanctions and
stop tearing up perfectly good nuclear deals?

~~~
tomohawk
A deal with no adequate verification regime is not a good deal.

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.

~~~
deetdat
Your first two points are not really supported by facts. The nuclear deal had
a relatively invasive verification regime. I also don't understand why people
refer to Iran as the world's largest supporter of terror--what specific terror
acts are we speaking of?

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.

~~~
yyyk
"The nuclear deal had a relatively invasive verification regime"

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".

~~~
miracle2k
> 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.

Thankfully, you can detect traces of nuclear material for months and years:
[https://www.iiss.org/blogs/survival-blog/2019/04/iaea-
inspec...](https://www.iiss.org/blogs/survival-blog/2019/04/iaea-inspections-
iran)

On the other hand, you might now get less access, an Iran as a nuclear
threshold state, and the war to stop it might not happen after all.

> 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.

Those things at least are not terrorism by any reasonable definition.

~~~
yyyk
'Detecting radioactive traces' isn't anywhere near enough.

You need to 'detect' centrifuge building and storage otherwise their breakout
time ( = time to get nukes from the time they decide to just ignore the
arrangements) is reduced to nothing and there isn't enough time to stop it.

Unfortunately, centrifuges don't have to be loaded with radioactive material
before activation, so a large construction program would be undetectable under
this scheme (especially given that some research and construction of
centrifuges was allowed).

Another problem is actually the long trace detection time: that allows Iran to
claim any trace is from the old nuclear program, and not a new one (that claim
already happened. It's probably right _this_ time). Since Iran was never asked
to account for the old program, it can make the claim for any new site ever.
It's not trivial to disambiguate whether a sample is new or old after a
certain threshold, these are trace amounts after all. There would be plenty of
room for doubt. With no possible proof, there would be no support for action
against any new program.

"These things are not terrorism..."

I gather that Iran's support for genocide/mass ethnic cleansing is no biggie,
but if you allow that in service of the deal, I wonder what you will allow in
the future.

------
asdojasdosadsa
Wow. Reading this felt like a continuous nightmare, can't image living in such
a restricted country. Very enlightening read, thanks for sharing!

------
aerovistae
This is so sad to read.

------
sytelus
Few things I learned recently: Iran is cut off from all international banking,
wire transfer, SWIFT etc. This means Iran must pay by hard cold cash for
everything. Sometime cash is sent in shipping container! Iran had few
countries helping for export import like Russia, North Korea and few 3rd world
countries. Recently Trump administrators have tighten up screw so much on this
that any company found to be doing transactions is also then cut off from
International banking system. US now tracks all ships going around Iran, runs
audits on them and enforces sanctions. Countries like Saudi Arabia is also top
enemy of Iran which puts additional pressure on other countries for sanctions.
I can’t imagine how average tech savvy person would be able to survive in
Iran.

------
sansnomme
Any DApp developer/startup care to comment on this? Blockchain/distributed
ledger is often touted to be resilient against attacks, censorship resistant
etc. etc. blah blah blah, so how well will they function against the will of
the United States?

@muneeb? @perlin-network?

------
nickleefly
I'm sure you heard of China GFW, We have strict censorship too, especially
during some event, we have used shadowsocks, v2ray. Lots of users reported tcp
packet was dropped, but you can use shadowsocks with v2ray-plugin, or v2ray
https over cdn

~~~
mohas
Hi, do you have any servers for shadowsocks I could use?

------
domrdy
Has anyone here managed to hire people from Iran? Our immigration lawyer told
us it would take more than a year to even get an appointment at the embassy -
I've tried calling multiple times and ultimately gave up. We're in Europe. It
sucked because we had a few promising candidates. If you happen to have any
special insight / loop holes that you are willing to share with me over email,
I would really appreciate it.

------
throwaway-76727
Has anyone ever heard of a charity fund for buying VPN access for people in
repressive, low-income countries?

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.

~~~
Tepix
Public VPNs will get blocked more frequently than private VPNs.

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

------
fabrika
"Even in US we can find certain domains which are blocked and cannot be
accessed like those which contain CP or wild anti-humanism contents."

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.

~~~
hartator
Yeah my understanding the FBI takes the actual domain down in case of child
pornography. But they still won’t mess with your DNS.

------
codedokode
Blocking access to documentation is too much, I think. Sanctions do not
require to block any access to the site from countries under sanctions.

------
byron_fast
Forcing HTTPS apparently doesn't help people who could benefit from privacy.
You don't _really_ need privacy to learn to code.

------
throwaway-29510
I worked for quite some time as a network engineer in a Syrian company.

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.

------
majortennis
What is it like, not how is it like, you could say how was it like. but how is
it just doesnt feel right

------
cerealbad
america needs to elect another straight shooter so people don't get confused
about foreign policy issues.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qdvm6h8WKg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qdvm6h8WKg)

------
lsiebert
There are of course arguments against doing this and in support of sanctions,
but I feel for this person.

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_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States)

------
ThrowAwayRedRed
I'm a developer in Iran too. Just wanted to say this guy works in Douran (شرکت
دوران) company, proudly stated in his page (Which screams amateur and
narcissist), they are providing the government with many censorship and
surveillance software and services.

They 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.

~~~
ignoramous
Thanks for sharing this.

> his page (Which screams amateur and narcissist)...

Pls tone down personal attacks, if you can.

------
Havoc
Seems near impossible to keep up with modern tech advances if you can't even
google stuff properly. :(

~~~
anticensor
He says that Google search works but results are irreachable.

------
dnprock
I may hold an extreme position here. I believe sanction is always a bad idea.
I grew up in a formerly sanctioned country, Vietnam. Life was rough for normal
people. They become increasingly attached to their sanctioned regime. The US
sanctioned Vietnam mainly because it took down a genocidal regime. Sanction is
not an effective tool for change.

The right way to move the world forward is to lead by example, to become the
society that other countries want to emulate.

------
EGreg
I have seen a lot of this kind of stuff. Sanctions almost never work, and are
almost always a bad idea.

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-...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/arming-rebels-has-pretty-
much-never-worked-180953054/)

2\. [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/world/middleeast/cia-
syri...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/world/middleeast/cia-syria-rebel-
arm-train-trump.html)

3\.
[https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-48978484](https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-48978484)

4\. [https://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/the-gops-no-
compromis...](https://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/the-gops-no-compromise-
pledge-044311)

5\.
[https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2004/jan/12/usa.books](https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2004/jan/12/usa.books)

6\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework)

7\. [https://www.npr.org/2017/08/14/543477518/north-koreas-
secret...](https://www.npr.org/2017/08/14/543477518/north-koreas-secret-
weapon-in-nuclear-program-ukrainian-rocket-engines)

8\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outside_the_Box](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outside_the_Box)

------
flyinglizard
I’m always caught by surprise when I see intelligent, educated people ignore
the nature and actions of Iran to justify their adversarial feelings towards
the US administration.

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?

~~~
jakobegger
Because you are not sanctioning only the military and the government, you are
sanctioning everyone in the country. You are sanctioning young people, who
just want to live their lives, just like we do. They already suffer from the
oppressive regime, and you just want to make their live even harder.

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?

~~~
flyinglizard
At what point should we start to hold ordinary civilians responsible to the
actions of their governments?

~~~
fit2rule
Always. The people _always_ get the politics they deserve.

~~~
ohithereyou
Do the current citizens of North Korea deserve the government they have?

~~~
fit2rule
The only thing propping up the regime is the society which feeds it.

~~~
ohithereyou
Do you believe that the main reason that the North Korean regime can survive
is due to the support of the people?

~~~
fit2rule
Indeed, its the only reason any regime survives.

~~~
ohithereyou
What practical means of resistance does the average North Korean citizen have?

~~~
fit2rule
Every possible means. Plus, the decision - and responsibility - to act on it.

------
kebman
Haha, at this point the only difference between Iran's totalitarian censorship
and Western censorship, is that the West does it way better, ref.
deplatforming and censorship on both Facebook, Google and Twitter. At this
point, even banks are trying to freeze the assets of people they don't like.

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.

------
mnm1
> People are dying due to absence of medicines. People are starving. The
> economy system is falling apart and the politicians and their children are
> all abroad!

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.

------
strooper
Dear Iranian devs, let's learn to take advantage of the situation instead of
complaining about it. Why not learn from the devs in China?! To my knowledge,
China blocks no less online service than Iran. China monitors citizens' online
activities in ways that very few other countries can. Yet their internet
services flourish and engage users in ways nowhere else is seen.

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?

~~~
Ayesh
This was heavily downvoted, but I think this can be an opportunity as well.

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.

