Tehran, Iran, April 18
Trend:
Iranian lawmakers are preparing a “double-urgency” bill to sanction Apple Inc.
“Apple's sales are some $1 billion a year in Iran, so if we impose sanctions against Apple, the company will be losing $1 billion per year,” a Member of Iranian Parliament Hasan Norouzi said, Trend reports citing ILNA.
“Naturally if we bring in our allies in West Asia on this, they will also impose same sanctions against Apple,” he said.
“It seems that our allies in the neighboring countries and western Asia are to sanction other US companies,” he said. “I think we can hit the United States every year with $10 billion worth of losses.”
“The United States has been imposing sanctions on us for 40 years, except for cases such as alcohol, cigarettes and drinks that were harmful to us,” said Norouzi.
Officially, Apple has no presence in Iran. Because of US sanctions, the company's IPhones are illegally imported into Iran and Apple doesn't offer a version of its AppStore in the Islamic Republic. This, however, hasn't stopped Iranians from purchasing IPhones.
Recently, Apple removed several popular Iranian apps from its app stores, telling developers that the apps were blocked due to US sanctions.