Earlier quoted context omitted.
US sanctions law saying that you must not transfer X from the US to Iran, directly or indirectly, is reasonable. US sanctions law saying that you must not transfer X from Brazil to Iran is gross overreach. Yes, of course the US can apply its absurdly extraterritorial laws to any parent company in the US, just as Iran could penalise any Iranian company whose US subsidiary distributed a depiction of the prophet or what…
That's a fair opinion to have. But the US isn't really unique in applying their laws extraterritorially. See GDPR, Universal jurisdiction laws, China's National Security Law, etc... Every jurisdiction with sizable power does it. Some of these are even more extraterritorial in scope than US sanctions are.
Only applies to EU citizens' personal data, so while technically extraterritorial it doesn't feel like overreach in the same way.
> Universal jurisdiction laws
Rightly controversial when applied beyond things that are internationally agreed to be crimes against humanity, like torture or genocide.
> China's National Security Law
A perfect example of the kind of thing that the US used to define itself in opposition to.
Nations are sovereign and those with the might to push their requirements on others can do so. But I liked it better when we had a sense of the value of an open international order, where things like internet protocols were shared standards that everyone would collaborate on other than a handful of pariah states.