Apple Said to Be Removing Iranian iOS Apps From the App Store

Apple has allegedly begun removing iOS apps originating in Iran from the App Store, according to reports over the weekend. Tech news site Techrasa posted a story claiming that the biggest e-commerce service, Digikala, had its app removed from the store a few days ago (Via TechCrunch).

The removal appears to relate to international trade laws. No official App Store exists for Iran, so Iranian startups and developers often register their apps as being outside the country to get onto the store.

Apple has been allowing the Iranian apps onto the App Store since September 2016. Digikala runs the Shaparak payment system which is totally isolated from international systems, so in theory it would not contravene Apple's terms and conditions. Several Iranian banks also offer iOS apps that are side-loaded onto phones, notes TechCrunch.

The Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations issued by the U.S. Department of the Treasury puts blocks on the Iranian market, which is home to 82 million people, 40 million of which use smartphones. According to Techrasa, Apple has sent the following to Iranian startups attempting to upload apps:

"Unfortunately, there is no App Store available for the territory of Iran. Additionally, apps facilitating transactions for businesses or entities based in Iran may not comply with the Iranian Transactions Sanctions Regulations (31CFR Part 560) when hosted on the App Store. For these reasons, we are unable to accept your application at this time. We encourage you to resubmit your application once international trade laws are revised to allow this functionality."

It's still not clear exactly what part of the regulations the apps have contravened. We'll update this story if further details emerge in due course.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tag: Iran

Top Rated Comments

(View all)

stormboy2011

33 months ago

"Its Not a Policy We Support :cool::D"

Rating: 28 Votes

spyguy10709

33 months ago

You mean the democratically elected president. Awful when it doesn't go your way isn't it?

The president of the *Republic*. Not to go all political on you, if the president was elected democratically we'd have a winner who had a plurality of votes. But we live in a nonsensical republic where rural votes mean more than urban votes so we get Captain Cheeto

Rating: 18 Votes

gleepskip

33 months ago

Unbelievably bad timing, Tim.

Rating: 14 Votes

simonmet

33 months ago

Hypocrite with a capital EVERY LETTER.

Rating: 13 Votes

Arminnn89

33 months ago

Iranian apps, huge threat to the national security. The Saudi-Arabian and Turkish ones are ok tho.

Rating: 13 Votes

Rustus Maximus

33 months ago

...But we live in a nonsensical republic where rural votes mean more than urban votes so we get Captain Cheeto

Maybe you're just trolling but I'm so tired of seeing this nonsensical description of the voting process of our Republic. Working as intended by our Founders, by the way, despite massive attempts to interfere with that process with such things as the 17th amendment for instance.

It isn't that the rural areas are more important, it's that no area is more important. Check a county by county election result map if you're interested in an example of the need for such a system. If you're being reasonable and open to discussion you'll begin to understand the wisdom of our republican form of government as established by our early political figures. To prevent the drowning out of less populated areas of our nation by those with huge urban centers. Hence the two houses of Congress. One for the people, one for the states, the Senate, where all states are EQUAL. The 17th has done much to damage that balance and a return to the original intent would go a long way to reestablishing order.

Our Founders, Jefferson in particular, were extremely wary of large urban centers and the havoc they eventually wreck on governments and the citizens of a nation through corruption. They were coming from Europe where such evil was visited daily on its citizenry by pompous, arrogant, aristocracy and monarchies. Disdainful of those they deemed unenlightened and beneath them. You know the type, right? Cheeto loving peasants.

Rating: 11 Votes