(The Epoch Times)—U.S. forces launched new strikes against Iran on July 12, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced in a social media post.
CENTCOM said the attacks that started Sunday 5 p.m. ET, or early Monday in Iran—directed by President Donald Trump—were aimed at degrading the Iranian regime’s “ability to attack civilian mariners and commercial ships freely transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”
The new round of strikes comes after multiple countries in the Middle East blamed Iran for drone and missile attacks against them on Sunday local time following earlier U.S. strikes on Iran for its striking a Cyprus-flagged container ship transiting the strait.
Bahrain reported further rounds of missile alert sirens on Monday as Iran retaliated over the latest round of U.S. strikes.
CENTCOM said in an update Sunday night that its latest round of strikes was complete, “hitting dozens of targets at multiple locations with precision munitions to degrade Iran’s ability to continue attacking international shipping flowing through the Strait of Hormuz.”
Earlier on July 12, the Qatari Ministry of Defense said that its defensive systems intercepted ballistic missiles that were fired at the Gulf nation, although few details were provided. The country’s foreign ministry also said it condemns Iranian attacks on its territory as well as attacks against Jordan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Kuwait.
The Qatari Foreign Ministry said in a post on X that it has the “full right to respond” to Iranian attacks, and it said that it could “take all necessary measures to protect its sovereignty, security, territorial integrity, and citizens.”
Separately, the ministry of defense for the United Arab Emirates reported on July 12 that it detected missile threats outside the country’s borders and is ready to respond.
In Jordan, the defense ministry said on July 12 that three missiles that originated from Iran fell across locations in the country and that no casualties were confirmed.
Kuwait’s army told local media on the same day that land border installations in the northern part of the country were damaged in attacks, while offshore drilling platforms owned by Kuwait were targeted in a drone attack. One worker on the platform was injured, the army added.
In Oman, state-run media reported that its government summoned Iran’s ambassador “following the targeting of sites in the Governorates of Musandam and Al Wusta by unmanned aerial vehicles,” noting that the incidents represent “irresponsible acts.”
The Bahraini Ministry of the Interior wrote on X early on the morning of July 12 that a siren had been sounded, and it urged citizens to “remain calm and head to the nearest safe place.”
Over the weekend, Iran said that the Strait of Hormuz has been closed by its military in response to recent U.S. strikes. However, the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) dismissed Tehran’s claims and said the key waterway is open and that traffic is ongoing.
“Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz,” CENTCOM said in a post on X. “It remains an international waterway. U.S. forces are positioned and prepared to keep it that way.”
The U.S. strikes on the night of July 11 and afternoon on July 12 were the latest in a cycle of attacks and counterattacks as Tehran has attempts to control shipping in the strait, also serving as an escalation in a conflict that started in February but stopped because of a ceasefire that was brokered under the Trump administration.
The renewed strikes have cast more doubt on the future of an interim U.S.–Iranian memorandum of understanding signed in June that sought to reopen the strait and lead to an end of the conflict. While speaking with NBC News on July 12, U.S. President Donald Trump expressed his displeasure with Tehran and described Iranian officials as “sick” and “very evil” individuals.
“We had meetings with them,” he told the outlet’s ”Meet the Press.” “They agreed to a deal yesterday, a perfect deal for us. No nuclear, no this, no that, no nothing. They gave up everything. And then after that, they left the room. And then within an hour, they launched a drone at a ship.”
Trump said the United States launched strikes against Iran on the night of July 11.
Iran’s military, in an article published through the semiofficial Islamic Republic News Agency media outlet, confirmed that it targeted U.S. military installations and sites in both Kuwait and Bahrain on July 12, saying that the attacks were in response to recent U.S. military strikes against Tehran’s assets.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said it launched missiles at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar that is used by the U.S. military and that it also launched an attack on U.S. fueling platforms in Oman. The paramilitary force further added that it launched missiles at Jordan in a bid to attack a U.S. base in the country.
In one statement confirming the Oman strikes, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said that the U.S. military “attempted once again last night to repeat a failed experiment by provoking several vessels to establish an illegal shipping route south of the Strait of Hormuz.”
Trump on July 10 in a Truth Social post warned that the United States would “decimate and destroy” Iran if the regime tried to kill him, saying that 1,000 missiles are “locked and loaded” and aimed at the country if it tries an assassination attempt. On July 11, Iranian leader Mojtaba Khamenei said in a statement that he would avenge the death of his father, Iranian leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed by U.S.–Israeli airstrikes in February.
“Orders have already been given, and the U.S. Military is ready, willing, and able, for a one year period of time, subject to extension, to completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran,” the U.S. president said.
Jacki Thrapp contributed to this report.
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.
