conclusions about the refusal of an Apple store clerk to sell an iPad to an Iranian-American woman in Atlanta—it was discrimination, and it was not discrimination.
The National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) saw a horrifying example of discrimination against Iranians, while the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian-Americans (PAAIA) found no discrimination and just a misunderstanding of the law by the Apple clerk.
The issue arose last Tuesday when an Atlanta television station 
NIAC issued a statement last Wednesday, the day after the Apple incident was revealed. It called for Apple “to take immediate steps to ensure its policies regarding the enforcement of Iran sanctions do not continue to discriminate against Iranian-Americans and Iranians in the US.”
NIAC policy director Jamal Abdi said, “Nowhere in the sanctions laws does it say you can’t buy an iPad because you speak Persian. What does preventing an Iranian-American teenager from buying an iPad have to do with preventing the Iranian government from getting a nuclear weapon?”
Abdi said, “Unfortunately, this is part of an escalating pattern in which increasingly broad sanctions on Iran are hitting the wrong people. Some of it is by design of Congress and the Administration; some if it is lack of clarity about what is permitted; and some of it is over-enforcement of sanctions by private companies worried about running afoul of the law.” He didn’t mention a fourth cause that some have suggested: a mis-reading of the Apple policy statement by a store clerk.
Abdi said, “These companies must stop over-enforcing the sanctions—but we must also recognize that this type of collateral damage is inevitable under broad sanctions.” NIAC has long been critical of the US sanctions policy on Iran.
PAAIA did not speak out until two days later, saying it did not want to speak until it had time to investigate just what had happened. It sounded like it was taking a modest swipe at NIAC’s swift reaction.
PAAIA said it looked into the issue along with the American Civil Liberties Unions (ACLU), the premier US organization dealing with discrimination issues, and the Iranian-American Bar Association. The statement said they all concluded that “Apple’s refusal to sell the product was not based on discrimination.”
PAAIA suggested that Apple should better train its employees, presumably so they would clearly understand sales to Iranian-Americans (or Cuban-Americans, Syrian-Americans, North Korea-Americans and Sudanese-Americans) are not banned by sanctions, and that the only ban is on the shipment of Apple products—and almost all other US products—to Iran.
PAAIA said—much like NIAC—that “the US embargo and sanctions against Iran are not well understood and leave much to be desired in the consistent application of these laws.”
At the State Department, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, “It is a fact that if you want to take technology goods from the United States to Iran, you have to have an export license…. But there is no US policy or law that prohibits Apple or any other company from selling products in the United States to anybody who’s intending to use the product in the United States, including somebody of Iranian descent or an Iranian citizen or any of that stuff. If you do want to take high-technology goods to Iran, you need a license. But that is a separate issue.”
But Nuland’s reference to buying a product “to use Ö in the United States” suggested store clerks should ask every shopper where they would use a product. That would likely prompt vociferous opposition from privacy advocates.
One legal expert said, “If you say up front, ‘I want to buy this to send to Iran,’ a store clerk should not sell the product. But a clerk has no business asking you why you want to buy something or what you will do with it.”
Under a strict interpretation of the law, Apple could be prosecuted if it sold products in the United States knowing they were to be sent to one of the five sanctioned countries, Washington lawyer Farhad Alavi told BBC Persian.
If a company was stacking up products by the thousands to be clandestinely sent to Iran, the US government would without question prosecute—and does almost every month. But if an occasional store clerk sells one embargoed item that ends up in Iran, the likelihood of prosecution approaches nil.
Sabet, who was born in the United States, said, “It’s discrimination. We are being racially profiled. He [the clerk] didn’t have any business asking me what country I was from.”
Alavi, however, said Apple would have grounds to refuse a sale if the clerk suspected Sabet planned to ship the device to Iran.
Apple itself was reluctant to discuss the matter. Apple spokesman Steve Dowling told the Iran Times there was no “discrimination” involved in one clerk’s decision not to sell an i-Pad to Sabet. “Our retail stores are proud to serve customers from around the world, of every ethnicity. Our store teams are multilingual and diversity is an important part of our culture. We don’t discriminate against anyone,” he said.
The Apple store near Atlanta showed reporters the written statement it had long ago received from Apple management. That simply summarized the US sanctions laws and said Apple does not export any of its products to Iran, Syria, Sudan, North Korea and Cuba.
The policy statement is exclusively about exports of Apple products. It does not say anything at all about selling products in stores to Iranian-Americans.
Lawyers said that, if a retail shopper said he or she was buying an Apple product to take or send to Iran, a store clerk should not sell that product to the shopper, whether the shopper was Iranian, Iranian-American or a descendant of the Mayflower crew. However, there is no practical way for a store clerk to know that without querying every shopper about what they will do with a product—something that Apple clerks are not told to do.
Sabet was described in some early news stories as saying she was buying the iPad for a relative in Iran, However, Sabet’s lawyer issued a statement Monday saying that was false. The statement said Sabet was buying the iPad as a gift for her older sister who lives in North Carolina.
The statement said two clerks helped her look over alternative products. Her uncle, who was with her, then asked a question about an iPhone he was thinking of buying for his daughter in Tehran. As Sabet translated the answer into Farsi for him, a third clerk approached and “rudely demanded to know what language” they were speaking, the statement said.
When Sabet said they were speaking Farsi, the clerk said he could not make the sale because “our countries do not have good relations with each other.”
The lawyer, M. Khurram Baig, said this was discrimination. “Contrary to erroneous reports that no discrimination took place, Ms. Sabet was treated differently than every other person who walked into that Apple store on that day,” Baig said. “That was not an accident. It happened because Apple supports a policy that allows Iranian-Americans like Ms. Sabet to be discriminated against and that must change immediately. Discrimination like this is an affront to everything we believe in as Americans.”
That comment sounded like he was preparing to file a suit against Apple, but the statement did not address that question.
Meanwhile, half a world away in Tehran, salespeople were laughing at the American controversy. They showed customers iPads and iPhones and dozens of other American-made gadgets that are not supposed to be sent to Iran but which Iranian shops buy every day through intermediaries, chiefly from Dubai in the past but now very often from Iraq, since the UAE authorities are cracking down on business transactions with Iran.
One sales clerk told Agence France Presse Friday that he had sold 40 iPhones the previous day.
Back in the USA, Sabet said she called Apple customer relations to complain about her treatment. She said the person on the other end of the line apologized for what happened and suggested she buy her iPad online.