I usually charge my iPhone by connecting it to my Ubuntu laptop. It is quite annoying that it tries to mount it as a USB-storage and adds it as an ethernet interface.
To the rescue: udev blacklisting:
sudo tee /etc/udev/rules.d/90-disable-iphone.rules <<EOF
# Disable iPhone ethernet device
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", DRIVER=="usb", ATTR{idProduct}=="12a8", ATTR{idVendor}=="05ac", ATTR{authorized}="0"
EOF
ATTR{idVendor} and ATTR{idProduct} might differ between different iPhone models. Examine with udevadm info -a -p /sys/class/net/<ethernet interface> and find any information, as close to the top as possible, that can be used to blacklist the device.