I have a remote browser isolation product that a few months ago a customer in Iran requested under dozen seats of. I told them I couldn't serve them at that time because of the sanctions. When I saw Blinken's tweet the other day[0], I thought of my potential Iranian customer, and emailed them to check-in. They said they were still happy and now had needed an order of magnitude more than before.

I started reading through the press release / license text[1] to try to make sense of it. It certainly seems like what I offer is covered.

I soon realized however that Stripe and my bank would likely consider transacting with Iranians a violation of their terms, understandably, as I don't think "financial services" are a covered business in these general licenses. In light of that, it may make it impossible to get paid. Then I hit on an idea: what if I use cryptocurrency? So that's my current heading.

Even so, I still need to verify if this person, their company, and their customers are not affiliated with the Iran government, and not on a blocked or restricted list. I don't really want to go through the personal details of people (it seems unnecessary from a product sales point of view), but it's part of ensuring compliance with OFAC and other restrictions, so I'm going to do it.

Even if that's all good, there's still other agencies that may restrict exports.

It's a minefield, but I think it's worth it to at least consider as well as I can, how I may be able to provide these folks with the services and products they want.

Anyway, I just wanted to PSA this news (I don't think many are aware of it, despite it being a big thing), and share my experience so far.

[0]: https://twitter.com/SecBlinken/status/1573327474951438337

[1]: https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/126/iran_gld2.pdf