(End of the American Dream)—The radicals that run Iran have warned President Trump over and over again not to touch Pickaxe Mountain. Nobody outside of Iran has ever seen what is going on inside that mountain, and the Iranians have been determined to keep it a secret. Because the facility is so far underground, it would be very difficult for even the most advanced bunker-buster bombs to damage it.
That is why neither the U.S. nor Israel tried to bomb it during Iran War 1 or Iran War 2. But now Trump is telling the world that we will be bombing Pickaxe Mountain “probably pretty soon”. Is this an indication that he has decided to take the war against Iran to the next level?
On Tuesday, Axios reported that Trump was considering two primary options…
- Option 1: Pursue a new 10-day ceasefire aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
- Option 2: Launch a massive joint military campaign with Israel to force Tehran’s capitulation.
Choosing to bomb Pickaxe Mountain would mean that Trump has chosen door number two.
Needless to say, that would have enormous implications for the entire world.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Israeli intelligence is convinced that “thousands of uranium-enrichment centrifuges” were moved inside Pickaxe Mountain late last year…
Israeli intelligence believes Iran moved thousands of uranium-enrichment centrifuges into tunnels deep inside a mountain last fall, Israeli and U.S. officials say, a development that would heighten concerns that Tehran could reconstitute its nuclear program.
Israel passed along the intelligence findings to the U.S., saying the centrifuges were transferred to the Pickaxe Mountain site last fall after the 12-day war in June when American and Israeli strikes pummeled Iran’s three main nuclear sites.
The reason why Iran would have wanted to move those centrifuges is to get them out of the reach of U.S. and Israeli bombers.
We are being told that the facility inside Pickaxe Mountain “was carved to a depth of more than 100 meters below bedrock”…
Satellite imagery shows that the complex was carved to a depth of more than 100 meters below bedrock, making it deeper and more fortified than the Fordow enrichment facility, a highly fortified, underground uranium enrichment facility.
To put that in perspective, 100 meters is 328 feet.
That is extremely deep.
In fact, it is so deep that the facility is considered to be out of reach “even for the most advanced bunker-penetrating bombs”…
Reaching these depths is considered a complex task, even for the most advanced bunker-penetrating bombs in the US arsenal.
Tehran claimed that the site is intended solely as a factory for the production and assembly of advanced centrifuges, not as an active enrichment facility. Iranian authorities, however, are preventing International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors from entering the site.
But U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth now appears to believe that we have weapons that can hit that facility.
On Tuesday, he made this claim to the Senate Appropriations Committee…
War Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday the U.S. military has the capability to strike Iran’s underground Pickaxe Mountain nuclear facility.
Asked by lawmakers at the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing whether the U.S. could destroy whatever is beneath the mountain, Hegseth said he would not discuss specific capabilities.
“A lot of our capabilities are classified,” Hegseth said.
Personally, I am skeptical that there are any conventional weapons anywhere in the world that could do the job.
But President Trump would not order an operation unless he was convinced that it would succeed, and he just warned that the bombing of Pickaxe Mountain could happen “probably pretty soon”…
President Trump said the U.S. will be striking Pickaxe Mountain, an alleged nuclear storage facility, though he wouldn’t confirm whether they believe centrifuges have been moved to the location.
“It doesn’t mean anything unless they have the material,” Mr. Trump said. “They don’t have– we follow the material. That’s where the action is.”
“And we’ll be hitting that area very– probably pretty soon,” the president threatened.
That sounds rather ominous.
He also went on to say that there is “not a thing” that the Iranians can do about it…
He also said he wouldn’t usually warn Iran, but there was “not a thing they can do about it.”
“If I thought they could do something about it, I would never say that,” Mr. Trump said. “But we’ll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily.”
To me, it sounds like he has made up his mind.
But with Trump you just never know until he actually pulls the trigger.
If Trump does pull the trigger, the Iranians are telling us that the response will be massive…
Iran’s top joint military command said Tuesday that all U.S. interests and those of its allies in the region would be targeted if Washington attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to Iranian state media, Reuters reported.
Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, the joint military command responsible for coordinating the country’s armed forces, also said any U.S. strike on Tehran’s nuclear or other sensitive sites would lead to an expansion of the war in the region, according to state media, as reported by Iran International.
The command warned that U.S. interests and its supporters would face a “powerful assault” if an attack were carried out.
In addition, the Iranians are reportedly also threatening to strike Israel if Pickaxe Mountain is attacked…
If Iran launches ballistic missiles at Israel, that will change everything.
One senior Israeli official is warning that in such a scenario his nation “will go all in”…
A senior Israeli official said Israel does not currently seek to join the direct confrontation between Washington and Tehran, but warned that any Iranian attack on Israel would trigger a broad response using the full range of Israel’s military capabilities.
“If Iran attacks us, we will go all in and strike them,” the official said. “We do not do half-measures.”
The official said Israel possesses a “very large target bank” and would use any broader confrontation to exploit additional opportunities across the region to damage Iran’s military capabilities and those of its proxies.
The Israelis don’t want to just bomb Iran for a few days.
If there is going to be a return to all-out war, they want to finish the job.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a six hour meeting with his security cabinet on Tuesday, and during that six hour meeting Netanyahu spoke directly with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio…
Israel’s security cabinet reportedly held a six-hour meeting on Tuesday to discuss possible scenarios of escalation against Iran, as officials voice concern that Jerusalem could embark on a renewed military campaign only to then be pressed by Washington to halt it after several days
During the meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to coordinate on the various scenarios, and discuss respective American and Israeli interests, according to Channel 12, which cited Israeli officials.
Israel is waiting for Trump to make a decision.
If Pickaxe Mountain gets bombed, we will know what the decision is.
And then things will get really crazy in the Middle East.
We have reached an extraordinarily dangerous chapter in human history.
There are certain things that cannot be undone once they are done, and a single wrong move could set off a chain of events that nobody will be able to control.
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.
