The commercial gain can be "don't break us up under antitrust law".

Apple is basically saying to governments: see our walled garden? The more you allow us to wall it, the more we can help you oppress your citizens.

This will likely be paired with the rollout of full encryption for iCloud and they will sell the entire thing as a pro-privacy move.

That would appear to have backfired.

More access to markets subject to totalitarian regimes

I'm assuming you're kidding here, but if you look at the list of countries already selling/supporting iPhones, what's not on the US export ban list that's a totalitarian regime?

https://www.apple.com/iphone/cellular/

China is obviously the big one as is Russia.

But they’re already in both countries.

Why can't they provide this feature to these regimes? Why do they implement it in the USA then? Seems like a roundabout way to go about it lol

Not being identified as the go-to platform for kiddy porn collectors.