Like any remotely interesting piece of technology, anything made by Apple Computer is officially banned, per US sanctions, from ever being shipped to Iran. A reminder of this fact came last month, when certain Apple Stores in the US were caught refusing to sell products to ethnic Iranians for fear it would violate the sanctions.
But what happens in Metro Atlanta is quite different from what happens in Tehran, where despite the US sanctions merchants are openly selling Apple products and customers are eagerly buying them.
“Business has been booming for the last three years,” insisted the owner of one Apple-exclusive store in Tehran, RadanMac. Others said that the inflation from the more recent US-EU banking sanctions have slowed purchases somewhat, but that business is still brisk.
And while Apple is trying to shut down one of the local sellers, called Apple Iran, for hosting a Persian-language copy of their website, the company is benefiting directly from the not-quite-banned trade, as locals report a brisk sale of software downloads from the iTunes and App Store. They just have to buy foreign gift cards, provide a phony address in a non-banned country, and commerce can continue on its merry way.
Apple products are messengers of American good will and prestige. Denying them to the Iranian people is contrary to American interests. Unfortunately, banning Apple is but a minor example of how our entire electoral system has been corrupted by Netanyahu's Israel, AIPAC, Israel Firsters and ingenious distribution of enormous amounts of Jewish money. This criminal treachery and treason would put us to nuclear war for the glory of Israel. The Government of the United States must again serve American interests, not the Jewish state's relentless pursuit of invulnerability, territorial conquest and apartheid supremacist empire in, and beyond, the Mideast.
Apple is overpriced shit, borrowed from Unix/BSD. There are some excellent open source alternatives for those feel they have to always have a telephone up to their ear.
The market always prevails. Governments can interfere with it for a time, but eventually it finds a way to defeat the central planners. iPhones, iPods, and whatever else people voluntarily exchange do more for peace and prosperity than every government in history combined.