Japan’s goal was to obtain oil supplies to replace that which we had cut off. Punishment had nothing to do with it.
The goal was to replace European colonial hegemony in the Pacific with the direct, absolute rule of Japan.
The view expressed by Rand Paul, Llewellyn Rockwell, Justin Raimondo, and the rest of the revisionist idiots is: the US was mean to poor Japan by not letting them have a little oil, we made them really mad, and they couldn't help but attack us. We were asking for it.
To non-morons, it is clear that Japan had long-term plans in the Pacific, that the Roosevelt administration was oblivious to those plans for too long, and that the Japanese were able to use the US as a source of materiel for far longer than a more alert country would have allowed.
Far from the US "provoking" Japan, America put up with Japanese provocations so long that they were able to use our own resources against us.