Economic sanctions prevent these regimes from entrenching themselves and growing. And if it didn't, the Iranian regime wouldn't be seizing ships and harassing our Navy to protest the sanctions. They work. And bad govts have crumbled using this and supportive efforts. Are you sympathetic to the underclass dissidents getting tortured and killed or the small fraction of Iranian upper-middle class elites complaining about the USA sanctions and not fully condemning the murderous Ayatollah?

I don’t think it takes “billions of resources” for a third world dictatorship to use a VPN.

For the average citizen of those countries, VPNs are either illegal or more expensive than their daily wage.