(End of the American Dream)—In 1962, the U.S. was absolutely determined to keep Russian missiles out of Cuba, because any Russian missiles launched from Cuba could potentially deliver nuclear warheads to major U.S. cities on the east coast in just minutes. After all these years, now we are facing another missile crisis.
The Russians are considering sending Kalibr cruise missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads to Venezuela, and the U.S. is considering sending Tomahawk cruise missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads to Ukraine. Meanwhile, the Middle East is on the verge of being destabilized as well.
On Tuesday, news that Russia may send “its most advanced hypersonic missiles to Venezuela” caught a lot of people by surprise…
Russia could send its most advanced hypersonic missiles to Venezuela as tensions with the United States escalate.
Alexei Zhuravlyov, deputy chairman of Russia’s parliamentary defense committee, told Russian news outlet Gazeta.Ru there were “no obstacles” to providing the Oreshnik or Kalibr missiles to the “friendly” nation.
“Russia is actually one of Venezuela’s key military-technical partners. We supply the country with nearly the entire range of weapons, from small arms to aviation. The details and volumes of deliveries are classified, so the Americans might be in for a surprise. I see no obstacles to providing our friendly nation with new systems such as the Oreshnik or the well-proven Kalibr missiles. No international commitments restrict Russia in this regard,” Zhuravlyov said.
The Russians must not do this.
Kalibr cruise missiles are capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and they can travel at speeds of up to 1,864 mph.
When they are in the air, U.S. officials would not be able to determine if they are carrying nuclear warheads or not.
The reason why Venezuela wants Russian missiles so badly is because the U.S. has been openly threatening the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
The U.S. has accumulated a very large force in the region, and according to the New York Times President Trump is surrounded by advisers that are urging him to take action to remove Maduro from power…
The Trump administration has developed a range of options for military action in Venezuela, including direct attacks on military units that protect President Nicolás Maduro and moves to seize control of the country’s oil fields, according to multiple U.S. officials.
President Trump has yet to make a decision about how or even whether to proceed. Officials said he was reluctant to approve operations that may place American troops at risk or could turn into an embarrassing failure. But many of his senior advisers are pressing for one of the most aggressive options: ousting Mr. Maduro from power.
Maduro fully understands what is going on, and he is desperate for the Russians to help him.
But if the Russians give cruise missiles to Venezuela, I think that President Trump will definitely give cruise missiles to Ukraine.
And if Ukraine starts firing Tomahawk cruise missiles at Moscow and other major Russian cities, that will put us right on the brink of nuclear war.
So hopefully the Russians will realize that sending cruise missiles to Venezuela would be a really bad idea.
Meanwhile, I am extremely concerned by what I am seeing in the Middle East.
Hezbollah has been rebuilding its forces, and Israel has been responding with targeted airstrikes.
But that hasn’t been enough to deter Hezbollah, and Fox News is reporting that the IDF is now “weighing broader operations”…
As Hezbollah rebuilds its forces and Lebanon is accused of failing to enforce the ceasefire terms brokered last year, Israel’s defense minister has fired off a warning to Beirut.
On Sunday, Defense Minister Israel Katz said, “Hezbollah is playing with fire, and the president of Lebanon is dragging his feet,” he said. “The Lebanese government’s commitment to dismantle Hezbollah’s weapons and remove it from southern Lebanon must be realized. Enforcement will continue and deepen — we will not allow a threat to the residents of the north.”
His warning comes as Fox News Digital has learned that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is weighing broader operations against the Iran-backed terrorist group after repeated violations of the truce.
If Hezbollah would just abide by the terms of the ceasefire, conflict could be avoided.
But that was never going to happen, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is warning that his nation is ready to do whatever is necessary…
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said Hezbollah was looking to rearm and that Israel would do whatever is necessary to prevent that from happening.
“Hezbollah is constantly taking hits, but it’s also trying to rearm and recuperate,” said Netanyahu at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting,
“We expect the Lebanese government to uphold its commitments, namely, to disarm Hezbollah. But it’s clear that we’ll exercise our right to self-defense as stipulated in the ceasefire terms,” he said.
I think that it is just a matter of time before Israel and Hezbollah start going at it again.
And I think that the same thing is true for Israel and Iran.
Instead of backing down, the Iranian government has announced that it intends to construct eight new nuclear power plants…
Tehran will build eight nuclear power plants, with help from Russia, on its northern and southern coastlines, AEOI chief Mohammad Eslami said on Sunday, according to Iranian media.
The Iranians insist that their nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
But everyone agrees that they have enriched uranium far beyond what is needed for peaceful purposes…
Iran still has hold of uranium enriched at 60 percent, and it is “very, very important” for international investigators to work out how it’s being used, Grossi told The Associated Press last week. Tehran could build as many as 10 nuclear bombs with its stockpile, should it take the step to weaponizing the material, he said.
If Iran keeps going down this path, war is inevitable.
In fact, I am convinced that the Middle East could erupt in flames a lot sooner than most people think.
At the same time, the U.S. and Russia both continue to make moves that are bringing us closer to a major showdown.
We are living in such perilous times, and yet most of the population still has no idea what is really going on out there.
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.