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Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed “peace president,” has already attacked two nations since the start of 2026 — engaging in regime change in Venezuela on January 3 and launching an air war on Iran on March 1 — and is now strongly suggesting that Cuba would be next. All three nations have been harmed by U.S.-led economic wars for years in the form of sanctions, which have hurt the countries’ populations en masse.

Kaveh Ehsani, an associate professor of International Studies at DePaul University in Chicago and contributing editor of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP)’s quarterly online Middle East Report, told me in an interview that U.S.-led sanctions “pauperized the Iranian population,” and “decimated” the middle class. They also created the conditions that led to the internal unrest that Trump in part used as a pretext for his war of aggression against Iran.

Within a month of taking office, Trump imposed a slate of “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran, one that the White House described as “a campaign aimed at driving Iran’s oil exports to zero,” and that pushed Iran’s economy — which was already weakened by years of international sanctions — over the edge. Ten months later, mass protests broke out in Iran as inflation skyrocketed and its currency plummeted, resulting in massive food and fuel shortages. The theocratic regime cracked down on dissent and by February 2026, more than 7,000 Iranians were reportedly dead.

Trump responded by announcing on social media that he stood ready to help Iranians against their government — as though he bore no responsibility for the sanctions whose impact they were protesting. At the same time he announced steep, 25 percent tariffs on nations doing business with Iran — business that might have helped improve the economic conditions that Iranians were protesting.

Ehsani pointed out that sanctions have had the opposite effect of helping Iranians. “If people are struggling to survive and feed their family and keep shelter or even buy basic foods, under these circumstances struggling for democracy becomes sort of a luxury,” he said.

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The Iranian people’s most recent win against their autocratic government took place in the fall of 2022, when the state murder of Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa (Jîna) Amini for “improper dress” (allegedly failing to wear a mandatory head covering) sparked a massive and historic mass mobilization that won real gains. The “Woman Life Freedom” movement resulted in a significant easing of gender-based government restrictions on dress. According to Ehsani, “women and their allies managed to actually push back the regime and normalize wearing whatever public dress you want in the street.” While the freedom of dress may sound relatively trivial, Ehsani pointed out that “this rule of hijab in public was an absolute pillar and a taboo for this government.”

Left to their own devices, there remained a possibility, however slim, of Iranians overthrowing their own government. But Trump’s harsh economic pressures and subsequent war on Iran have rendered that even more difficult.

Sanctions have hurt the countries’........

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