Apple Store -- Tehran?

Maybe, someday:

Senior Apple executives have met potential Iranian distributors at Apple’s regional headquarters on London’s Hanover Street, four people familiar with the matter said. The Cupertino, Calif., company explored the possibility of having Iranian partners sell Apple products at so-called premium resellers, three of the people said. Instead of company-operated Apple stores, such outlets would be midsize franchisees that sell Apple products only, a model the company has used in Europe and Asia, the people said.

Apple declined to comment.

Now the real reason for the Administration’s pro-Iran policies become clear…

Now for a slightly more serious note.

Businesses exist to make money, and an easy way for a business to make more money is to move into a new market starved for its products or services. For a purely hypothetical example, imagine if California imposed a 30-year moratorium on common sense, you own a profitable cluebat manufacturing plant in Arizona, and the moratorium is about to expire. Naturally, you’d be talking to people across the state line about setting up distribution channels.

There’s nothing right or wrong about what Apple is doing — it’s just business.

The question in my mind is: Why now? What makes Apple think this is a good time to spend scarce resources and precious personnel on the Islamic Republic? Let’s even leave aside for now that big-time Democrat Al Gore sits on the company’s board. (And when Al Gore sits on the board, he really sits on the board.)

We all saw the story this week that the Administration is nonplussed that Iran is close to getting nukes, and seemingly giddy that Israel has acquiesced to that deadly fact. We’ve also all read the stories that Professor Ditherton Wiggleroom, in one of his rare-yet-boneheaded instances of decisiveness, is ready to end-run Congress on lifting the sanctions on Iran unilaterally.

So what Apple is doing is just smart business. What I’m afraid of is we’re all about to learn if iPhones glow in the dark.