By Jacob G. Hornberger
The Future of Freedom Foundation
April 14, 2026
After threatening to annihilate Iran with bombs, President Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment have decided to do so with their tried and true foreign policy tool of sanctions - or, in this case, they're calling it for what it is - a blockade, which, as most everyone recognizes, is an act of war just as much as a bombing spree is.
Recognizing that Iran had Trump over a barrel with its control over the Strait of Hormuz, which has produced soaring gasoline prices and other adverse economic consequences for American voters, especially in the run-up to mid-term congressional elections, Trump, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA have obviously now bowed to the inevitable by accepting Iran's economic stranglehold over the Strait.
Keep in mind: Trump and the Pentagon initially contemplated using U.S. military force to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Trump has now abandoned that possibility in favor of a blockade that would prevent oil from being transported through the Strait. Yes, you read that right: Trump's plan would do exactly what Iran is doing - preventing oil from passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
As the old saying goes, if you can't beat them, join them.
However, the Pentagon quickly vetoed and modified Trump's plan, which should give one a pretty good sense of who is really in charge here. The Pentagon - or CENTCOM, which is short for United States Central Command, which is the part of the worldwide U.S. Empire that controls the Middle East - announced that all ships that didn't use Iranian ports would still be free to transit the Strait and that any ship that used an Iranian port would be subject to being stopped and seized.
Of course, given that a blockade is an act of war, the Pentagon's modified plan enables Iran to fire on vessels that are using the Strait that haven't used Iranian ports. Thus, as a practical matter, Trump's plan, as compared to CENTCOM's modified plan, was more realistic.
The idea is this: Prevent Iran from making any money from tolls from ships that Iran permits to use the Strait. The idea of the blockade is based on the U.S. blockade of Venezuela and Cuba, where the U.S. Empire has used economic sanctions to target the population with death by starvation as a way to secure regime change or a regime that follows orders of the U.S. Empire. The latter is what happened with Venezuela, where the socialist-communist, narco-terrorist regime is now dutifully following whatever orders Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment issue to it.
While Trump, the Pentagon, and the CIA realize that American consumers will continue to suffer the economic consequences of their illegal and unconstitutional (i.e., no congressional declaration of war) war of choice and war of aggression on Iran, the hope is that Iranian officials, faced with the prospect of mass starvation among the Iranian people, will capitulate and unconditionally surrender to U.S. forces prior to the mid-term elections.
It's actually a very clever - I would say devious - strategy. Why ? Because Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment know that most Americans only care about the annihilation of Iranians that is brought about by U.S. bombs. That admirable sentiment was reflected by the national outrage over Trump's threat stating, "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again."
But Americans have always been nonchalant and blasé about the suffering and deaths brought about by economic sanctions, embargoes, and blockades. That's because Americans view these methods of killing foreigners to be "peaceful" methods. They're viewed as simply a foreign-policy "tool" of the U.S. government. They've become a normalized part of American society.
But as I have long contended, economic sanctions, embargoes, and blockades are the epitome of evil. Their aim is no different from that of terrorists. They target innocent people - a foreign populace - with severe impoverishment and even death by starvation and illness - as a way to achieve a political goal. That is certainly what has happened with the people of Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran.
Moreover, sanctions, embargoes, and blockades are anything but peaceful. They are based fully and completely on violence and the threat of violence.
When this foreign-policy "tool" succeeds in impoverishing or killing multitudes of foreign citizens, most Americans couldn't care less. We saw this phenomenon in Iraq in the 1990s, when the U.S Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright told Sixty Minutes that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children were worth the attempt to secure regime change in Iraq. Most Americans yawned with indifference.
Their reaction was the same when U.S. sanctions, combined with Venezuelan socialism, caused eight million Venezuelans to flee their country in a desperate attempt to survive. Most Americans didn't care, except when many of those refugees fled to the United States, in which case many Americans supported their deportation to Venezuela or El Salvador, knowing that death, torture, or indefinite incarceration awaited them.
Or look at Cuba, where the decades-long blockade, combined with Cuban socialism, has the Cuban people right now on the precipice of massive death by starvation and illness. Most Americans are indifferent to that possible annihilation, which could begin at any time now.
Sanctions, embargoes, and blockades demonstrate perfectly the evil that came with America's conversion to a national-security state as well as America's embrace of a foreign policy of interventionism. Imbued with a deep fear of just about everything (e.g., foreigners, Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, terrorists, Muslims, communists, drug dealers, and illegal immigrants), the American people, including those who go to church every Sunday, ended up rendering unto Caesar something important that belonged to God - their consciences.
To get our nation back on the right track, it is necessary for Americans to take back their consciences, engage in some serious soul-searching regarding right and wrong when it come to their own government, and come to the realization that their own government's annihilation of foreign nations or civilizations with sanctions, embargoes, and blockades is just as evil as doing so with bombs.
This article was originally published on The Future of Freedom Foundation.