(End of the American Dream)—There have been some major developments in the war in the Middle East, and the information that I have to share with you in this article is so important. The Trump administration has been urging the Iranians to make a deal and has been warning them about the consequences that they will experience if that does not occur. Unfortunately, the Iranians are refusing to meet with U.S. officials in Pakistan and they are making it clear that all hopes for a deal are dead. So now President Trump will have to decide whether he wants to follow through on his threats or not. If he does keep his word, the entire world is going to be shocked by what happens next.
Over the past couple of days, Trump has posted a number of messages about the war with Iran on his Truth Social account.
Yesterday, he celebrated the destruction of the largest bridge in Iran and he warned that if Iran does not make a deal there will be “nothing left” of the country…
Without a doubt, the level of destruction that we have already witnessed has been staggering.
Thousands upon thousands of targets have been destroyed, and more are being hit with each passing day.
But now it appears that Trump is prepared to escalate matters to an entirely new level.
In a subsequent message on his Truth Social account, Trump threatened to take out Iran’s power grid…
The Iranians have already warned us that if their power grid is attacked they will strike energy infrastructure and desalination plants all over the region.
If that happens, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states may formally enter the war.
The Saudis have already made it very clear to the Trump administration that they do not want this war to end until Iran can never pose a threat to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz ever again.
And now that Iran is completely refusing to negotiate, a “permanent solution” appears to be the most likely goal.
So what would a “permanent solution” look like.
Just hours ago, Trump posted a message on his Truth Social account in which he suggested that we could quickly reopen the Strait of Hormuz, take Iran’s oil and “make a fortune”…
Trump followed that up with another message in which he suggested that we should “keep the oil”…
Needless to say, taking Iran’s oil and keeping it for ourselves would require U.S. boots on the ground.
There has been a tremendous amount of speculation that Kharg Island and other Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf could be potential targets for a U.S. ground operation, and we know that thousands of U.S. Marines have been sent to the region…
The 11th Amphibious Ready Group with the landing dock support vessels and 2,500 Marines is more than halfway across the Pacific, making a brief stop in Hawaii this week
It’s joining the 31st MEU, with the same number of troops already on station around the Hormuz on USS Tripoli.
A ground war would be a major escalation, and so many people on both sides would die.
But it appears that this is very much on the table.
Ominously, the Pentagon has reportedly placed a huge order for “prefabricated bunkers that could be used to fortify island positions”…
Meanwhile, the Pentagon this week placed orders for prefabricated bunkers that could be used to fortify island positions, insiders say.
Why would they spend so much money on those bunkers if there was no plan to use them?
On the other side, the Iranians are promising to conduct attacks that are “more crushing, broader and more destructive”…
Tehran will continue fighting until the US and Israel face “permanent regret and surrender,” Ebrahim Zolfaqari, spokesperson of the Khatam al-Anbiya central headquarters, said in comments carried by the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
He said Iran would step up military operations and launch “more crushing, broader and more destructive” attacks on its enemies.
Once U.S. soldiers are on Iranian soil, those that are currently running Iran will go ballistic, and I am convinced that they will show absolutely no restraint at all.
Despite the claims that we are hearing in the mainstream media, the Iranians are still quite capable of launching large numbers of missiles and drones…
Roughly half of Iran’s missile launchers are still intact and thousands of one-way attack drones remain in Iran’s arsenal despite the daily pounding by US and Israeli strikes against military targets over the past five weeks, according to recent US intelligence assessments, three sources familiar with the intel told CNN.
“They are still very much poised to wreak absolute havoc throughout the entire region,” one of the sources said of Iran.
If you doubt any of this, just look at what has happened over the past few days.
During Passover and the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Iran and Hezbollah hammered Israeli territory with rockets and missiles…
It’s the Passover period in Israel, and Iranian and Hezbollah missiles have been unrelenting, with The Wall Street Journal documenting that they unleashed more than 140 rockets and missiles on Israel, citing the Israeli military – highlighting sustained firepower more than five weeks into the war, and after various estimates have claimed Iran’s stockpile is diminishing.
Tehran fired roughly 20 missiles that penetrated Israeli territory, while Hezbollah launched over 120 rockets into northern Israel within a 24-hour window from early Wednesday to Thursday, Israeli military spokesman Nadav Shoshani said. The military described the barrage as an escalation on both fronts, also as this week the Houthis have become direct launches on Israel, having confirmed coordination in these waves with Tehran.
We should be very thankful that Iran has only used conventional warheads so far.
How will the U.S. and Israel respond if that changes?
We were also told that Iranian air defenses were completely destroyed, but somehow they just found a way to shoot down an F-15E fighter jet and an A-10 Warthog…
A U.S. F-15E fighter jet was shot down over Iran on Friday, and one crew member from the plane was later rescued by American forces, U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News.
The F-15E is flown by a two-member crew, and the search for the second crew member, a weapons system officer, is continuing, two U.S. officials said.
The jet was shot down by Iranian forces around 6:45 a.m. ET, the officials said, and the combat rescue mission ensued shortly after. An A-10 Warthog was part of the search and rescue mission when it took fire and was damaged. The Warthog pilot ejected over the Persian Gulf and was successfully recovered, according to the officials.
In addition, NBC News is claiming that two U.S. helicopters there were searching for the crew of the downed F-15E were also hit…
Two US military helicopters have been struck by Iranian fire while participating in the search and rescue mission for the F-15, a US official told NBC News.
All service members are safe, they added.
How is this possible?
All Iranian air defenses were supposed to be gone.
Have the Russians or the Chinese been providing Iran with some new equipment?
If so, that would be very troubling news.
Meanwhile, Iranian troops are being mobilized to respond to a potential U.S. ground invasion.
Even before the war, the Iranian regime had more than a million fighting men that they could call on, and apparently they are adding to that number by recruiting “children as young as the age of 12”…
Iran is ramping up the recruitment of children as young as the age of 12 into military-linked roles tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to new reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
The reports underscore mounting pressure inside Iran’s war effort. As U.S. and Israeli strikes intensify, rights groups and analysts say recruiting children points to manpower shortages and a growing reliance on paramilitary forces to hold the home front. It also escalates the human cost of the conflict, placing minors in direct danger while exposing Iran to potential war crimes liability.
That is something that I hate to see.
12-year-old kids shouldn’t be involved in this war.
But there is no hope for peace now.
The IRGC has filled the power vacuum in Iran, and they have essentially sidelined Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and his entire administration…
Rising tensions between the Pezeshkian administration and Iran’s military leadership have pushed the president into a “complete political deadlock,” with the Revolutionary Guard effectively assuming control over key state functions, informed sources told Iran International.
The IRGC has blocked presidential appointments and decisions while erecting a security perimeter around the core of power, effectively sidelining the government from executive control.
Efforts by Masoud to appoint a new intelligence minister last Thursday collapsed under direct pressure from IRGC chief-commander Ahmad Vahidi, sources with knowledge of the situation told Iran International.
The IRGC is made up of hardcore Shiite zealots that truly believe that they are fighting a holy war for their god.
Anyone that is expecting them to surrender is going to be waiting for a really long time.
In fact, they just made it very clear that there will be no negotiations with the United States…
The current round of efforts by regional countries led by Pakistan to reach a cease-fire between the U.S. and Iran has reached a dead end, mediators said Friday.
Iran has officially told the mediators it isn’t willing to meet U.S. officials in Islamabad in the coming days and that U.S. demands are unacceptable, the mediators said.
There are 125,000 members of the IRGC.
So assassinating a few of their key leaders won’t make that much of a difference, because they have a seemingly endless supply of replacements.
Ending this war is going to be exceedingly difficult, because the IRGC is refusing to allow it to end.
The have control of the Strait of Hormuz, they have lots of missiles and drones left in their arsenal, and if they are being supplied by the Russians or the Chinese they could potentially keep on fighting indefinitely.
So I don’t think this war is going to end any time soon.
Instead, I think that some major escalations are about to happen, and that will shock the entire planet.
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.