by Jacob G. Hornberger

January 16, 2026

While U.S. officials and their right-wing and interventionist supporters are condemning and castigating the Iranian government for killing thousands of Iranian protestors, they conveniently block out of their minds an important point: The U.S. government is a co-killer of those protestors.

Ever since the 1979 Iranian revolution, which succeeded in ousting from power the CIA-installed brutal dictator of Iran, the Shah of Iran, the U.S. government has imposed and enforced one of the most brutal and deadly and ever-growing systems of economic sanctions in history against the Iranian people.

The purpose of the sanctions? Regime change. The goal has always been to create so much economic suffering among the Iranian people that they finally rise up against their brutal dictatorship, oust it from power, and install another U.S. puppet regime in its stead.

Over the decades the sanctions have succeeded in creating massive economic suffering among the Iranian people. Year after year and decade after decade, the standard of living of Iranians has continued to diminish because of the sanctions.

Thus, when signs of nationwide protest over Iran’s permanent economic crisis began manifesting themselves, U.S. officials and their rightwing statist supporters, including those in the mainstream press, were giddy with excitement. Finally — finally! — their sanctions were working. The Iranian people had had enough. Besieged with ever-growing economic misery, including inflation, they were rising up against their dictatorial regime. The Iranian regime, U.S. interventionists excitedly concluded, was finally in danger of falling.

Except for one thing: The Iranian regime was never going to go quietly into the night, not even in the face of massive protests. As a brutal dictatorship, it was always going to do whatever was necessary to preserve its existence, even if that meant killing thousands of Iranian protestors, which is precisely what it proceeded to do.

Thousands of Iranian protestors are now dead, and yet the Iranian regime is still standing. The U.S. goal of bringing down the Iranian government by using sanctions to create a deep economic crisis within Iran has failed to achieve its regime-change goal. The protests are now seemingly dead as well. Those thousands of Iranian citizens have been sacrificed for nothing.

No one should be shocked over the massive death toll. Every tyrannical regime, including the U.S. government, would not hesitate to do the same given the same or similar circumstances. In fact, it is ironic that while U.S. officials were protesting Iran’s killing of protestors, their ICE agent shot dead an American protestor, calling her the same thing the Iranian regime calls its protestors — a “terrorist,” the label that tyrannical regimes all over the world now use to justify their illegitimate killings.

Given the willingness, even eagerness, of U.S. soldiers to obey orders to kill peaceful people on the high seas in cold blood — and given the same willingness and eagerness of ICE agents to kill peaceful protestors in cold blood here inside the United States — and given the same willingness and eagerness of U.S. officials to protect these killers — and given the willingness of President Trump to invoke the “Insurrection Act” — and given the ease by which U.S. officials have labeled their victims as “narcos” and “terrorists” and even “fucking bitches,” does anyone doubt that U.S. officials would do the same thing that Iranian officials are doing if massive protests were threatening the existence of the U.S. government?

It’s time for the American people, especially those who go to church every Sunday, to look in the mirror and do some serious soul-searching. Where is the morality of imposing deadly economic sanctions against the people of a country in the hopes of achieving a political goal, including regime change? How are sanctions reconcilable with the principles of religion that so many Americans hold dear? Indeed, how are sanctions different from terrorism?

The U.S. government should never have imposed sanctions on the Iranian people. Sanctions are the epitome of evil. They are designed to sacrifice innocent people for the sake of a political goal, which is what terrorists also do. So what if the Iranian people had survived and prospered under an anti-U.S. dictatorship? There are plenty of people surviving and prospering under pro-U.S. dictatorships around the world. The U.S. government had no moral or legal authority to use the Iranian citizenry as sacrificial pawns to achieve its political agenda of regime change.

Finally, note something important: It was the CIA coup in 1953, which destroyed Iran’s experiment with democracy, that ultimately led to the brutal theological dictatorship that has just co-killed those thousands of Iranian protestors. Thus, the U.S. government has a double moral culpability for those thousands of deaths — its 1953 interventionism against Iran and its deadly system of sanctions that has inflicted untold economic suffering on the Iranian people, which was what motivated them to rise up unsuccessfully against their tyrannical regime.

In the wake of the thousands of Iranian people that the U.S. government has just co-killed, Americans need to confront the discomforting fact that there is a malignant cancer at the center of their empire. That malignant cancer is the empire’s policy of economic sanctions. This evil, deadly, malignant cancer needs to be excised permanently from the American body politic.