by Jacob G. Hornberger

May 11, 2026

The common assumption is because the Iranian regime is engaged in evil, that makes the U.S. government’s war on Iran something good. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here we have a classic case of evil versus evil. That’s what all too many Americans still can’t come to grips with — that their very own government is engaged in evil while combatting the evil actions of the Iranian regime. Twin evils—that’s what we have here.

There is no better example of this twin-evil phenomenon than the economic devastation that both regimes are intentionally, knowingly, and deliberately wreaking on the civilian populace of the other regime in an effort to induce the other regime to capitulate. The Iranian regime is targeting the American people with economic devastation and the U.S. regime is targeting the Iranian people with economic devastation. Which side will capitulate?

To understand the evil nature of what both regimes are doing, it is helpful to remind ourselves as to why terrorism is evil. Terrorists target the civilian population of a particular nation with the aim of altering the policies of the government in that nation. Thus, for example, they’ll bomb an office building or a restaurant, killing multitudes of innocent people. They will then say to the government of that nation: “If you don’t want more deaths, change your policy to what we want.” If the government refuses, the bombings continue.

The evil in this is obvious: the people who are being killed have nothing to do with their government’s policies. They are simply pawns in the terrorists’ efforts. In the eyes of the terrorists, their lives have no value — at least in comparison to the value of a change in governmental policies.

I have long pointed out the evil of U.S. sanctions, which have long been a tool in the U.S. government foreign-policy arsenal. U.S. sanctions target the population of a country with death by starvation or illness through economic devastation. The deaths that are produced by sanctions don’t appear as bad as those resulting from a terrorist bomb, but the people who die from sanctions are as dead as those who die from a terrorist bomb.

For decades, the U.S. regime has imposed a system of extreme sanctions on the Iranian people as a way to secure regime change in Iran. The idea has been twofold: (1) If the regime in Iran wants to stop the deaths, impoverishment, and suffering from the sanctions, it should renounce power and be replaced with another pro-U.S. puppet regime, one that will follow the orders of the U.S. regime; or (2) If the Iranian people wish to stop the deaths, impoverishment, and suffering from U.S. sanctions, they should rise up in a violent revolution and replace the Iranian regime with a pro-U.S. puppet dictatorship.

Despite the deaths, impoverishment, and suffering, the sanctions have never succeeded in achieving regime change in Iran. President Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment (and the Israeli regime) were hoping that their massive bombing campaign would accomplish that goal, but it has failed to do so.

The twin blockade that the U.S. and Iranian regimes have now imposed on the Strait of Hormuz is simply a variation of economic sanctions. The Iranian regime is using its blockade to wreak economic devastation among the American people through soaring oil prices.

They are succeeding in doing that. Just last week, I wrote about a dairy farmer in Pennsylvania who auctioned off his dairy cows because his business couldn’t survive soaring fertilizer prices resulting from the oil-price increase. He is just one example of many whose lives are being upended by twin blockades on the Strait of Hormuz.

But the same thing is happening to the Iranian people, albeit to a much greater extent given that they have been subjected to decades of brutal and ruthless economic sanctions, massive bombing sprees, and now a U.S. blockade that hopes to destroy the nation’s oil industry, thereby wreaking massive death and destruction among the populace. Check out this Wall Street Journal article to get a sense of what the Iranian people are going through: “Iranians Feel the Pain as Their Economy Descends Into a Death Spiral.” Their plight is absolutely horrendous.

But like terrorists, neither the Iranian regime nor the U.S. regime care about the innocent people who are paying the price of this twin blockade. To make an omelette, it is necessary to crack eggs. The civilian population in both countries are considered to be the eggs. If the civilian population has to suffer death and impoverishment, that’s just the way things go sometimes. Anyway, in the minds of regime leaders, it’s not really they themselves who are causing all this death and suffering among foreigners. In their minds, it’s the other regime that is doing so because all the other regime has to do to stop the deaths and economic devastation is capitulate.

There is one good way to deal with at least one side of this twin evil. The U.S. regime should immediately cease all negotiations with Iran, unilaterally bring all U.S. troops home from Iran (and everywhere else) and discharge them into the private sector, stop all foreign interventionism (including U.S. sanctions, embargoes, blockade, coups, and state-sponsored assassinations), dismantle the U.S. Empire and the national-security state form of governmental structure, and restore our founding governmental system of a limited-government republic.