(End of the American Dream)—One day in the not too distant future, someone in the Middle East is going to push things too far, and it will set off a tsunami of destruction that will shock the entire planet. Israel is armed to the teeth, and Israel’s enemies are armed to the teeth. An all-out war in the Middle East should not be an option for anyone, but we are now dangerously close to such a conflict. Very early on Sunday morning, Hezbollah was preparing to fire an enormous number of rockets at targets deep inside Israel in response to the assassination of Fouad Shukur in Beirut last month. The Israelis figured out what was going on, and a massive pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah hit rocket launchers all over southern Lebanon. According to the Times of Israel, thousands of targets were struck during this operation…
Israeli fighter jets simultaneously struck thousands of Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon early Sunday morning, in what the military said was a preemptive operation against weaponry that was about to be used in a major attack on central and northern Israel.
Thousands of Hezbollah rocket launchers were struck simultaneously by some 100 IAF fighter jets in the preemptive attacks, the military said.
This was only possible because the IDF has had large numbers of aircraft in the air on a constant basis in recent weeks.
If these aircraft had not been on alert, things could have turned out very differently.
Could you imagine the scenario we would be facing right now if thousands of rockets had successfully reached major Israeli cities?
Following the success of the IDF operation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boldly declared that “thousands of rockets that were aimed at northern Israel” had been destroyed…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking at the start of a Cabinet meeting, said the military had eliminated “thousands of rockets that were aimed at northern Israel” and urged citizens to adhere to directives from the Home Front Command.
“We are determined to do everything to defend our country, to return the residents of the north securely to their homes and to continue upholding a simple rule: Whoever harms us — we will harm them,” he said.
But some rockets did get through.
The IDF and Hezbollah are giving us different numbers, but they both agree that large numbers of rockets and drones were fired into northern Israel…
The strikes did not prevent the Iran-backed terror organization from beginning what it said was its response to the killing of its military commander Fuad Shukr in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut last month, with Hezbollah claiming it fired over 320 rockets and drones at northern Israel.
According to the IDF, some 210 rockets and some 20 drones were launched from Lebanon at northern Israel in Hezbollah’s attack. Some of the projectiles were intercepted, while others impacted, causing damage and injuries.
But the damage that was ultimately done was fairly limited.
At this point, we are being told that the most extensive damage was caused in the city of Acre…
Through Sunday afternoon, the largest reported damage was to dozens of buildings hit by Hezbollah in Acre.
Prior to Sunday, villages in the northern Galilee and Golan Heights had been hit; Kiryat Shmona had been hit throughout the war, but damage to Acre had been very rare and much smaller.
Needless to say, this was not the massive retaliation that Islamic militants throughout the Middle East were anticipating.
This attack is being widely viewed as a “failure”, and Hezbollah is being ruthlessly mocked on social media.
In particular, some Arabic social media accounts are finding humor in the fact that some chicken farms in northern Israel were damaged…
An Arabic-language account with over 44,000 followers that appears to be associated with the Syrian opposition publishes an image of a chicken and a post reading: “The chicken massacre was not a coincidence, but a strategic plan, with the goal to preventing enemies of the ‘resistance’ from gloating and saying ‘They didn’t even hurt a chicken.’”
A parody account with a smaller following posts a series of images from a damaged poultry farm, with the caption “The Battle of the Poultry.” In the comments, somebody posts a cartoon showing a chicken with the head of Nasrallah saying “Our response will be harsh and earth-shattering,” and another chicken protesting: “You’ve killed us.”
Another image circulating on social media shows dozens of chickens in military fatigues lying dead on the ground, with the hashtag: “#Hezbollah killer of chickens and chicks.”
Of course Hezbollah is insisting that the strikes were a great success, and Hassan Nasrallah is warning that more strikes could be coming in the future…
Hezbollah’s latest attack on Israel has been completed, but further strikes could be carried out in the future, the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said in a televised speech Sunday evening.
Hezbollah launched its attack in retaliation for Israel’s assassination of its most senior military official, Fu’ad Shukr, in late July.
Nasrallah said the militant group had delayed its response until Sunday to give “sufficient opportunity” for Gaza ceasefire negotiations to take place, to impose greater “mental and financial strain” inside Israel, and to ensure the attack’s success.
For now, an all-out war has been avoided.
Hezbollah is able to claim that it got “revenge” for the killing of Fouad Shukur, and Israel feels no need to respond with overwhelming force because not much damage was done.
But both sides continue to prepare for the “final showdown” that they both know is coming.
There are approximately 100,000 Israeli citizens that will not be able to return home until Hezbollah is out of southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah will never leave southern Lebanon willingly.
So the IDF has been preparing to go into southern Lebanon, and on the other side Hezbollah has been preparing to invade northern Israel once that happens.
When the time arrives, Hezbollah’s invasion of northern Israel will be spearheaded by “the group’s fanatical Radwan militants”…
According to verified research, the Hezbollah invasion would be led by the group’s fanatical Radwan militants, who have battled in Syria’s civil war for years.
The potent unit will be nothing like the Hamas rabble who stormed out of Gaza on October 7, and it will pose a major challenge to Israel’s own crack troops.
The Radwan Force, whose troops wear a distinctive lion-and-sword emblem, was formed in the aftermath of Hezbollah’s last conflict with Israel in 2006 and has been trained and equipped by Iran.
Overall, Hezbollah has an army of approximately 100,000 men, and according to NBC News that army is likely to be bolstered by thousands of fighters from militia groups all across the Middle East…
Thousands of fighters from Iran-backed groups in the Middle East are ready to come to Lebanon to join with the militant Hezbollah group in its battle with Israel if the simmering conflict escalates into a full-blown war, officials with Iran-backed factions and analysts say.
Of course when an all-out war erupts, it won’t just be Hezbollah that Israel is fighting.
Syria has an army of approximately 170,000 soldiers, and Iran has an army of approximately 420,000 soldiers.
If push comes to shove, the IDF is going to have a serious challenge trying to contend with a combined force of that size.
In addition, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran all have vast arsenals of very sophisticated missiles.
If Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem are being pummeled by thousands of missiles, Israeli leaders would not just sit back and do nothing.
They would respond with overwhelming force, and Beirut, Damascus and Tehran would be flattened.
So we should be very glad that all-out war has not erupted yet, but the truth is that it is coming. It is just a matter of time.
Sadly, it won’t be too long before someone finally pushes things too far, and then the entire globe will be absolutely horrified by the death and destruction that we witness.
Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” 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.
