(End of the American Dream)—It is not often that I find myself at a loss for words. The events of the past 48 hours have been absolutely shocking. We have never seen Donald Trump talk like this, and the Iranians are pledging to respond to any escalation with extreme fury. If both sides follow through with their threats, any hope for a rapid conclusion to this war will be completely gone. While most people living in the western world continue to party, we really are about to cross a point of no return. Needless to say, the vast majority of the population is not ready for what is about to take place.
I am about to share some statements with you that are unlike any statements that any president of the United States has ever made.
If you have not seen these statements yet, you might want to brace yourself, because they are quite dramatic.
On Saturday, Trump ominously warned the Iranians that “all Hell will reign down on them” if they do not make a deal by Trump’s deadline…
I do not have an explanation for why Trump ended that message the way that he did.
On Sunday, Trump posted a message on his Truth Social account that was even more shocking…
Over the years, Trump has posted a lot of alarming things on social media.
But this was the most alarming of them all.
Trump had previously threatened to destroy Iran’s power facilities and bridges, and so that part wasn’t a surprise.
But what came after that was really apocalyptic.
Using profanity and threatening to send the Iranians to hell is only going to escalate the situation.
And the last sentence of that post is a phrase that no president of the United States should ever use under any circumstances.
In a subsequent post, Trump gave the Iranians a very specific deadline for making a deal…
This is it.
I do not believe that Trump is bluffing, and neither does U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham…
The Iranians have not been moved by any of Trump’s previous threats.
So why would they give in now?
It is being reported that the U.S. and Israel have already picked out “a list of strategic targets” that will be hit if Iran does not make a deal by Tuesday’s deadline…
Israel and the United States have finalized a list of strategic targets in Iran to be struck if Tehran fails to meet President Donald Trump’s ultimatum, The Jerusalem Post reported citing two informed sources.
The report says final details were reportedly settled during a meeting last week between IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir and US Central Command leaders, where officials discussed roles and mission objectives should the ultimatum expire.
According to the report, Israeli officials are urging Washington to prioritize strikes on Iran’s energy sector and national infrastructure, arguing such attacks could trigger economic collapse and weaken the regime’s grip on power.
The IRGC is running the show in Iran now.
They aren’t going to give in to Trump’s demands under any circumstances.
In case there was any doubt, a huge banner has gone up in Tehran that boldly declares that the Strait of Hormuz “will remain closed”…
Images have emerged from Tehran of a huge banner on the side of a building depicting Iranian soldiers carrying a netted bag filled with US military vehicles.
Written above the image are the chilling words: ‘The Strait of Hormuz will remain closed; the entire Persian Gulf is our hunting ground’.
It comes after Trump ramped up pressure on Iran, warning that Hell will rain down on them if a deal is not reached regarding the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
The Iranians have clearly made their choice.
They have repeatedly told us that if their power grid is attacked they will strike key energy infrastructure all over the Middle East…
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf has responded to Trump’s previous threats to attack its power plants by saying it would respond by targeting Gulf and U.S.-linked energy facilities in the region, including “critical infrastructure, energy infrastructure, and oil facilities” throughout the region.
Iran’s joint military command repeated that threat on Sunday.
“We once again repeat: if you commit aggression again and strike civilian facilities, our responses will be more forceful,” a spokesman said in comments published by the IRNA news agency.
In addition, the Iranians are also threatening to close the Bab al-Mandab Strait…
A key advisor to Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, also threatened the closure of another key waterway that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. Ali Akbar Velayati warned in a social media post on Sunday that Iran could close the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
“If the White House thinks of repeating its stupid mistakes, it will quickly realize that the flow of global energy and trade can be disrupted with a single signal,” he wrote on X.
If the Iranians are able to carry out their threats, the consequences will be apocalyptic.
Once oil and natural gas infrastructure is destroyed, it will take years to rebuild it.
In other words, we are potentially facing a worldwide energy crisis for the foreseeable future.
Most people out there are acting as if it is just a matter of time before things return to normal. They simply do not understand what we are facing.
The Iranians were supposed to be out of launchers and missiles by now, but that has not happened.
It appears that the U.S. and Israel have not been able to destroy many of Iran’s underground facilities.
And even when underground facilities have been damaged, the Iranians are digging them out very rapidly…
The New York Times on Friday featured American intelligence analysis saying that Tehran has retained a substantial number of missiles and mobile launchers, raising serious doubts on how close Washington actually is to eliminating the Islamic Republic’s missile capability.
The report states that Washington cannot determine how many launchers have been destroyed because Iran has deployed decoys. Underground bunkers and silos may appear damaged, but launchers are rapidly recovered from rubble and returned to use through the quick work of excavators and heavy equipment.
To completely eliminate the threat of Iranian missiles and drones, it would probably require boots on the ground.
And that is a step that the Trump administration really does not want to take if it can be avoided.
I don’t see a way that this war is going to end any time soon.
Needless to say, that is very bad news for all of us.
As the war drags on, how much help will the Iranians get from their friends?
Fox News is claiming that some of the missiles that the Iranians are using against the U.S. and Israel are “either North Korean systems or based on North Korean designs”…
A Fox News Digital report cited missile expert Bruce Bechtol as saying that some Iranian missiles used against US and Israeli targets are either North Korean systems or based on North Korean designs.
He said the missile fired at Diego Garcia was a Musudan, adding that Iran purchased 19 of these missiles in 2005.
He also described Iran’s Shahab-3 as “almost an exact copy” of North Korea’s No Dong.
Bechtol also told Fox that North Korea had helped Iran develop missile capabilities including the Qiam, Emad and Ghadr systems.
If the North Koreans are willing to pass along missile technology to the Iranians, what else might they be willing to pass along?
Let’s just hope that the North Koreans don’t decide to do something really stupid.
The Russians and the Chinese have also been helping the Iranians, and I think that we will see a lot more of that in the days ahead.
In fact, four vessels that are “believed to be carrying Chinese chemicals for missile fuel” have successfully docked at Iranian ports…
Ships believed to be carrying Chinese chemicals for missile fuel have arrived in Iran, raising questions about Beijing’s support for the regime.
Four sanctioned Iran-flagged vessels have docked at Iranian ports since the war broke out, Telegraph analysis of shipping data show.
Another ship was floating offshore near Iranian waters, according to MarineTraffic, a ship-tracking and maritime analytics provider.
The ships are thought to be carrying sodium perchlorate, a precursor material used to produce solid-fuel propellants for missiles.
At some point the U.S. and Israel could decide to attack vessels that are arriving from China, but that would risk dragging China into the war.
Of course the same thing would be true for Russian ships that are bringing supplies to Iran through the Caspian Sea.
This conflict could turn into a full-blown global war a lot more easily than most people realize.
We are at a major turning point in human history, and it certainly won’t take much to push us over the edge.
So let us hope that leaders on both sides make their choices very wisely, because pretty soon there will be no turning back at all.
Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
