US sanctions lock Iranian gamers out of World of Warcraft

It's a plausible theory that cultural engagement with Iran might work better than sanctions. However, you can't have some people doing one and some doing the other. For better or worse, after trying various other things without success, the Administration has decided on sanctions. For sanctions to be effective, they have to hurt enough to force the other side to compromise. Weakening sanctions for any reason just draws out the conflict longer.

Every dollar out of Iran is a dollar less the regime has to "fight" its idealogical war.

What war? They haven't started a war in more than a century. Probably more. Seriously is there a war going on I don't know about?

Trying to legally define what is and is not a valid financial transaction coming in and out of Iran is a fool's errand. There's these things called commodity markets, and most everything is a commodity (more or less liquid) that can be bought and sold. Including WoW accounts, WoW gold, etc. If you wanted to launder, say, oil revenues into completely respectable US financial holdings....

And just think: due to these new restrictions, many Iranian players could get into a whole new world of encryption, non-Iranian VPNs, non-Iranian bank accounts, etc., etc. Which could have very positive political ramifications for the US down the line.

Say what you will about America or Germany or whomever in the western world, but I can still write here "Obama is an idiot" or "Merkel is a crook" or "The American Government should be destroyed, the Constitution should be abolished, and the ancient Corinthian Oligarchy should be enacted in its stead" or whatever and still sleep like a babe without any fear of repercussions.

It's far from a perfect freedom, but it's better than the alternative.

Sanctions have not done anything to change Cuba or North Korea. However openness has.

Just look at what happened when Nixon opened doors to China. Now, China is no perfect country, but they have become a business partner and opened up a lot more than they would have otherwise.

Sanctions actually help the Iranian regime to further hide the population from democratic ideas. The regime in Iran was weakest when Obama gave his speech in Cairo and Iranian had access to internet and other means of communications. You need the population to have access to computers, smart phones etc. and sanctions do the exact opposite.

> If we want to get Iranians to "come to the light" that is US policy

The Iranian's don't need WoW to realize that they are under tyranny. They know well what freedoms they are missing, and who is responsible for it. No one will be blaming the US government for taking away WoW, as these days all anger is redirected at the Iranian government internally. All due to recent tightening of US sanctions (last 2 years) and the massive economic pressures it has caused inside Iran.

> Every dollar out of Iran is a dollar less the regime has to "fight" its idealogical war.

It is naive to think that every dollar in Iran is spent on the regime's "ideological war". Specially people's hard earned money. If you want to trace back the money you're looking for, look at China for continuing to purchase oil from Iran.

'actually have them interacting positively with people in the United States'

Most (all?) Iranian players would probably be playing on European servers.

This is in part due to the hour differential, and partly because WoW clients sold in Europe automatically (only?) connect to EU servers.

In far too many hours of playing WoW, I've never encountered a player from the US.

There's probably something buried in the terms of use that they'll claim allows for this very sort of scenario. If these players lived in North America, they might be able to find a legal remedy, but they're in Iran.

Or youth on the streets protesting their government, after not being able to escape anymore into a fantasy world