The US Empire is Incredibly Ruthless

John Mearsheimer said, “[In] Iran, you understand that we use that tremendous economic weight that we have basically to starve people, to make them suffer, to inflict enormous punishment on them to rise up against their governments.”

Mearsheimer argued “The degree of murder and violence that we’ve created around the world is just incredible.” Mearsheimer used a Lancet Global Health report from 2025 to back up his argument.

The Lancet documented the effects of US and UK economic sanctions on 152 countries between 1971 and 2021. In those fifty years, the Lancet estimated US (and UK) sanctions caused an annual death “toll of 564?258 deaths.” Mearsheimer extrapolated, “We killed 38 million people [with sanctions].”

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported on the new phase of US economic warfare against Iran. Dubbed “Operation Economic Outcast,” the new sanctions are an “effort to squeeze Iran into submission.”

Yet, as the Journal reported itself a month prior, “the renewed economic pressure hurts ordinary Iranians.” To paraphrase Mearsheimer, President Trump uses economic warfare “basically to starve [Iranian] people.”

Meanwhile, according to the Journal, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth “is quietly extending troop deployments in a sign that the conflict could drag well into next year.” In addition, Vance and Rubio told Trump that “the Iran war could drag on through the remainder of his term.”

Washington quietly admits the illegal US war of aggression against Iran will last for years while it continues to commit war crimes in Iran.

Last Thursday, the United Nations concluded “two U.S. airstrikes on Iran in February in which at least 178 civilians died had been indiscriminate and amounted to war crimes.” This included, according to the New York Times, “the attacks [that] hit the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school on Feb. 28 and killed 157 people, including around 123 boys and girls below the age of 13.”

The Times also recorded a US war crime the beginning of this month. On September 1st, a wedding in the city of Kuhestak, “began like any traditional wedding in southern Iran… It ended when a bomb brought down the roof.” A US glide bomb killed “At least five wedding guests… including a 6-year-old boy, and at least 67 other people were wounded.”

The war crimes, the naval blockade of Iranian ports, and the economic warfare will continue against Iran for months (and years) ahead. There is no end in sight. Yet, as the cost of the US war of aggression against Iran climbs higher, over $38 billion as of last month, the cost to ordinary Americans also increases.

The American taxpayer will have to pay the $38 billion war bill. Also, the Wall Street Journal reported, “U.S. consumers have collectively spent about $107 billion more on gasoline and diesel during the [war]… than they would have had there been no war.”

Yet, big oil companies report sky-high profits. The American taxpayer foots the bill, while the huge corporations run away with all the profit.

-Anton Porcari