by Jacob G. Hornberger

March 12, 2026

Immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, an ostensibly shocked President Franklin Roosevelt went before Congress to request a declaration of war against Japan. In that address, Roosevelt declared that December 7 would be “a date which will live in infamy.”

Why did FDR make that dramatic claim? It was because the Japanese attack on the United States was a “sneak” attack — that is, an attack that was not preceded by an official declaration of war by Japan against the United States. Under FDR’s reasoning, by not first declaring war on the United States and then attacking Pearl Harbor, Japan had behaved in a sneaky, low-brow, dishonorable way.

And that’s been the official U.S. narrative that has been taught to American schoolchildren in America’s public schools ever since. Every student in the United States is inculcated with the notion that December 7 is a date which will — and should — live in infamy because of the Japanese “sneak” attack on Pearl Harbor.

A question naturally arises: Should that official narrative regarding America’s entry into World War II now be scotched, in view of the recent U.S.-Israel sneak attack on Iran?

The U.S.-Israel war on Iran was initiated on Saturday, February 28, when Israel launched a sneak attack that succeeded in killing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, several key Iranian leaders who were meeting with Khamenei, and spouses and children of Iranian officials.

U.S. officials and American interventionists consider their deadly attack to be a masterpiece of military ingenuity and are still celebrating the fact that they killed so many Iranian officials with just one sneak attack.

Prior to the Israel-U.S. attack, U.S. officials and Iranian officials were engaged in negotiations, purportedly in an effort to avoid a war. In fact, a meeting was scheduled for Monday, March 1, between U.S. officials, including Jared Kushner, who is President Trump’s son-in-law, and Iranian officials to continue the negotiations.

Obviously, however, that meeting never took place because it was short-circuited by the U.S.-Israel surprise sneak attack on Iran two days prior to the date of the scheduled meeting.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, prior to the U.S.-Israel sneak attack on Iran, the U.S. Congress had not issued a declaration of war on Iran, as required by the U.S. Constitution as a prerequisite to the president and the Pentagon waging war on Iran.

Moreover, prior to the attack, President Trump didn’t declare that negotiations between the two nations had come to a fruitless end. On the contrary, he made it appear as though the two sides would, in fact, being meeting on Monday to continue negotiating.

Thus, one has to ask: If the Japanese “sneak” attack on Pearl Harbor is still considered to be nasty, low-brow, and dishonorable, why shouldn’t the U.S.-Israel sneak attack on Iran be considered the same way? Or to put it another way, if the U.S.-Israel sneak attack on Iran is to be considered an act of military ingenuity, is it now necessary to teach American schoolchildren that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was also an act of military ingenuity?

The reason I put the word “sneak” in quotation marks when referring to the Japanese “sneak” attack on Pearl Harbor is that the attack was actually not as sneaky as American schoolchildren are taught. That’s because President Roosevelt desperately wanted the attack to happen, as a “back door” to getting the United States into World War II. He knew that the American people were overwhelmingly opposed to entering the war, especially given the disastrous consequences of U.S. entry into World War I. Since this was a time when presidents were still complying with the constitutional restriction regarding a congressional declaration of war, FDR was hoping to provoke Japan into attacking the U.S. so that he could corner Congress into granting him his declaration of war under the rubric of “self-defense.”

That’s what FDR’s oil embargo on Japan and the freezing of Japanese assets in the U.S. were all about — provoking Japan into attacking the U.S. fleet in the Pacific. Japan’s goal in the attack was to break free of FDR’s oil embargo by knocking out America’s Pacific fleet, a part of which FDR left at Pearl Harbor as “bait.” By knocking out the fleet, Japan hoped to then have a free hand to secure oil in the Dutch East Indies. which would enable it to continue its war in China, something that FDR was demanding it cease. It’s worth mentioning that FDR got U.S. aircraft carriers, which would help defeat Japan’s navy at the Battle of Midway several months later, out of Hawaii prior to the Japanese attack.

Moreover, what the American people didn’t know at the time was that U.S. officials had broken the Japanese diplomatic code and, therefore, were reading Japanese communications to their diplomats in Washington, D.C., in the weeks, days, and hours leading up to the Japanese attack. By reading those communications, FDR knew that an attack was coming — and , again, wanted the attack to come.

Thus, the wily FDR was being a bit disingenuous when he acted “shocked” after Japan’s “sneak” attack on December 7. My hunch is that Iranian officials were genuinely shocked about the U.S.-Israel sneak attack on February 28. Should both dates now live in infamy? Or should the official U.S. narrative about December 7 that has long been taught to American schoolchildren now be revised?