(End of the American Dream)—Have we reached a point of no return? As I write this article, the world is waiting for news that Iran has attacked Israel. If it happens, it is likely to be a significantly larger attack than the last one. Of course once Iran attacks, then everyone will be watching Israel to see if they strike back or not. If Israel chooses not to strike back, this could be the end of it for a while. But ultimately this is a war that is still just getting started.
It is just a matter of time before all-out war erupts, and when we finally reach that point the death and destruction that we will witness will shock the entire globe.
Everyone pretty much understood that there would be no Iranian attack until after the meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on Wednesday. Following that meeting, Iran’s acting foreign minister warned that Iran “has no choice but to exercise its inherent right to legitimate defense”…
Iran has no choice but to respond to Israel’s “aggressions,” Iran’s acting foreign minister said on Wednesday, as the Middle East awaits Tehran’s response to Israel over the killing of a Hamas leader in the Iranian capital last week.
“In the absence of appropriate action by the Security Council against the aggressions and violations of the Israeli regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran has no choice but to exercise its inherent right to legitimate defense against this regime’s actions,” Iranian media quoted Ali Bagheri-Kani as saying during an extraordinary session of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
The meeting was convened partly at Iran’s request, following the killing of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last Wednesday, an attack that Iran has attributed to Israel. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack.
Elsewhere, the head of the Iranian Army also seemed to indicate that a decision to attack Israel has already been made…
Chief Commander of the Iranian Army Abdolrahim Mousavi did not sound consolatory when he spoke of Israel’s pending destruction on Wednesday.
“The Zionist regime will soon receive a strong and definite response, and there is no doubt about it,” Mousavi reportedly said, according to IRNA and Tasnim. “It is clear that they themselves have realized the speed of their own destruction, and by doing so, they want to save themselves from the quagmire, but they definitely cannot save themselves from annihilation.”
It certainly appears that an attack will be coming.
We just don’t know exactly when that attack will take place.
Egypt made headlines when it issued instructions for its airlines “to avoid Iranian airspace for a three-hour period in the early morning on Thursday”…
Egypt instructed all of its airlines to avoid Iranian airspace for a three-hour period in the early morning on Thursday. The NOTAM, a safety notice provided to pilots on Wednesday, said the instruction would be in effect from 0100 to 0400 GMT. It provided no further details as to why the notice was issued.
An Egyptian official was quoted by the state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV as saying that the Iranian authorities said to avoid flying in Iranian airspace because of “military exercises.”
“Based on a report from Iranian authorities to all civil aviation companies, flights over Iranian airspace are to be avoided,” the unnamed official was quoted as saying.
Now that the period of time in that warning has passed, it seems clear that this was just a false alarm.
And there are many that are hoping that Iran will ultimately decide not to attack at all.
If you can believe it, that even includes the new president of Iran.
It is being reported that the president of Iran specifically asked Ayatollah Ali Khamenei not to launch an attack…
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has reportedly asked the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to refrain from attacking Israel, according to a report by Iran International on Wednesday.
Pezeshkian warned Khamenei of the potential attack’s effects on his presidency, with Iran International quoting sources familiar with the development.
The new Iranian president cautioned that an Israeli retaliatory attack could cripple Iran’s economy, infrastructure, and even lead to the country’s collapse.
I really wish that the Ayatollah would listen to him.
On the other side, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is assuring the Israeli people that his government is prepared for whatever might happen…
“We are prepared both defensively and offensively,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated during a visit Wednesday to the IDF induction base at Tel Hashomer.
“I know that the citizens of Israel are concerned, and I ask one thing of you: Be patient and level-headed,” he said.“We are striking our enemies and are determined to defend ourselves.”
And of course the U.S. stands ready to defend Israel as well.
In fact, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is sending additional military assets to the region…
“To maintain our carrier strike group presence in the Middle East, I’ve ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln to replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt later this month,” he said.
“I’ve also ordered more cruisers and destroyers capable of ballistic missile defense to the region,” Austin stressed.
Another fighter squadron has also been deployed to the Middle East “to reinforce our defensive air support capabilities here,” he added.
We better hope that an all-out war does not erupt in the Middle East any time soon.
Because the truth is that the U.S. military is definitely not prepared to fight a major war.
Our military is in such bad shape that we were not even able to conduct a successful withdrawal from Afghanistan.
We really need to get our act together, because it is just a matter of time before thousands of missiles start being lobbed back and forth in the Middle East.
It isn’t going to happen yet.
But as I have been warning for years, it is definitely coming.
So don’t get too comfortable.
This war in the Middle East will eventually blow up in a major way, and once that happens there will be no going back.
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.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is assuring the Israeli people that his government is prepared for whatever might happen…
After NetanYahoo’s October 7th preparedness I doubt this comment makes them feel any safer.