Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has reportedly drawn up a secret escape route to Moscow should the ongoing protests overwhelm his regime’s grip on power. According to an intelligence report cited by The Times of London, the 86-year-old ruler would depart Tehran with a small entourage of up to 20 family members and aides, including his son and heir apparent, Mojtaba Khamenei. This contingency mirrors the recent flight of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who sought refuge in Russia after his downfall in December 2024.
The plan involves stockpiling assets abroad, drawing from Khamenei’s control over vast holdings estimated at $95 billion through opaque foundations like Setad. Intelligence sources indicate that many in his inner circle already have relatives settled in places like the United States, Canada, and Dubai, facilitating a smooth exit. Khamenei’s choice of Moscow is obvious with Tehran’s deepening alliance with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, a partnership that has supplied drones and missiles for conflicts in Ukraine and against Israel.
Protests have swept Iran for over a week, fueled by crippling economic woes, including skyrocketing inflation and shortages exacerbated by last year’s brief but devastating war with Israel. Demonstrators, facing brutal crackdowns by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, have clashed with security forces, resulting in at least 41 deaths so far, as reported by human rights groups. Khamenei, who has rarely appeared in public since the unrest began, broke his silence on January 3, vowing that rioters “must be put in their place” and refusing to back down.
President Donald Trump issued a stark warning to Tehran over the weekend, threatening to strike Iran “very hard” if the regime continues its violent suppression of protesters. This comes amid reports that U.S. intelligence is monitoring the situation closely, with some analysts suggesting American support could tip the scales toward regime change. Trump’s stance contrasts sharply with past administrations’ approaches, which critics argue emboldened Iran’s aggression through deals like the 2015 nuclear agreement.
The regime’s fragility exposes cracks in what was once portrayed as an unshakeable theocracy. Khamenei’s paranoia, as described in a Western psychological profile, drives his pragmatic yet ideological decisions, balancing short-term compromises with long-term ambitions. Yet, with security forces showing signs of strain—desertions and defections reported in isolated incidents—the Supreme Leader’s hold appears more tenuous than ever.
Russia’s role as a potential safe haven raises questions about broader geopolitical machinations. Moscow’s support for Iran, including military aid, aligns with a pattern of propping up anti-Western dictatorships. Some observers speculate this axis could be part of a coordinated effort to destabilize global order, echoing alliances that have long troubled free nations. Iran’s backing of terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas further cements this view, as the regime funnels resources to proxies while its own people suffer.
In the face of such oppression, the Iranian people’s resolve stands out. Protesters, many risking their lives for basic freedoms, draw from a deep well of perseverance. This struggle resonates with timeless principles of justice and human dignity, values that have inspired movements throughout history. As one demonstrator told Reuters, “We are tired of living in fear; it’s time for real change.”
If Khamenei’s escape plan activates, it could signal the end of nearly five decades of clerical rule since the 1979 revolution. With assets abroad and allies in Moscow ready, the Supreme Leader seems prepared to abandon the ship he has steered into crisis. Meanwhile, the world watches, hoping for a future where Iran rejoins the community of nations committed to peace and prosperity.
For now, the streets of Tehran remain a battleground, with no clear resolution in sight. The coming days will test whether Khamenei’s regime can quell the dissent or if history repeats itself, as it did in Syria. Either way, the implications for the Middle East—and beyond—are profound.
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.
Welcome,
I am Tony Soprano. I speak of myself as Tony Soprano. Tony has his eyes on the world. Better behave. There is a new Capo in town. Now, good news is he will protect you. Tony loves the neighborhood. You may get a welcome visit from one of his “lieutenants” to give you a gift basket and a hug and to set time for weekly chats on your finances and health, which Tony cares about a lot. So, thank you for your support of Tony, his family, his lieutenants, his medical staff (very good with orthopedics). Tony is glad to have you on his team.
Be Safe,
Tony
Typical of muslim “leaders”. They’re all for martyrdom, as long as they’re not the martyr. If he truly believed all that wicked mess he’s been imposing on others, funding and supporting, all these years, with all the death he has caused, then he would stay and, himself, face the prospect of death …
And before the muzzie reaches Russian airspace, it will mysteriously go down, with no survivors.
Putin wanted their oil, coming to Russia, not their cult.
Do you think Vlad does this for free? Oh no, he extracted something from them very big.