(End of the American Dream)—This is the most dangerous moment that we have seen in the Middle East in modern times. As you will see below, Israel has decided to hit Iran. There is still debate about whether it should be a devastating blow or a more limited strike. But in either case, the Iranians are pledging to retaliate. In fact, the Iranians are promising to respond to any attack with overwhelming force.
Needless to say, that would certainly provoke another response from Israel. The cycle would continue until someone finally decides that enough is enough. But what if neither side backs down and the conflict escalates to an unthinkable level?
According to the Times of Israel, Channel 12 is reporting that the Israeli government has decided to hit Iran “clearly and forcefully”…
In an unsourced report, Channel 12 claims the war cabinet has made the decision to hit back “clearly and forcefully” against Iran for its missile and drone attack on Saturday night.
The response will be designed to send the message that Israel “will not allow an attack of that magnitude against it to pass without a reaction,” the report says. The response will also be designed to make plain that Israel will not allow the Iranians to “establish the equation” they have sought to assert in recent days. This appears to be a reference to Iran’s warning that future Israeli strikes on Iranian territory, including its international diplomatic premises, will henceforth again be met by Iranian retaliatory strikes on Israel.
Of course that isn’t the only outlet that is indicating that a decision has already been made. According to Axios, Yoav Gallant has told Lloyd Austin that Israel feels that it must respond to Iran’s attack on Saturday…
Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant told Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Sunday that Israel has no choice but to respond to the unprecedented missile and drone attack launched by Iran over the weekend, a U.S. official and another source briefed on the call told Axios.
And on Monday, Herzi Halevi publicly stated that Iran’s attack “will be met with a response”…
Israel’s war cabinet met Monday to discuss how and when to respond to Iran’s attack, which Tehran said was in response to the killing by Israel of a senior Iranian general at an Iranian diplomatic building in Damascus, Syria. Israel hasn’t confirmed or denied involvement.
“We are looking ahead and considering our steps. The launching of so many missiles, cruise missiles and drones into Israeli territory will be met with a response,” said the head of Israel’s military, Herzi Halevi, during a visit to an Israeli air force base that was damaged by the Iranian attack.
Some news sources were suggesting that an attack was imminent, but that appears to be very unlikely.
The war cabinet is going to meet again on Tuesday, and any strike on Iran will almost certainly have to wait until some time after that meeting…
The war cabinet is scheduled to meet again tomorrow, the report notes, and Home Front command regulations have not been changed, indicating that an Israeli attack is unlikely to take place today.
But the clock is ticking, because Passover is coming up, and that is a major national holiday in Israel.
So I would expect something to happen well before then.
Many in Netanyahu’s coalition are getting restless, because they want to hit Iran extremely hard.
In fact, Itamar Ben-Gvir has said that it is time for Israel “to go crazy”…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing base is already disgruntled that the ground operation in Rafah hasn’t taken place and doesn’t seem imminent, since Israel has pulled most of its soldiers out of Gaza. Israel is calling up two reserve brigades in the coming days for reinforcement in Gaza but will need more forces for any major operation. Now, Netanyahu’s supporters want a strong retaliation against Iran as well.
“To create deterrence in the Middle East,” Israel “has to go crazy,” Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister and a voice of Israel’s hard right, said on Sunday.
Failure to act against Iran or in Rafah could further harm Netanyahu’s already diminished political support, said Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser.
On the other hand, some Israeli leaders want to strike Iran without greatly escalating matters. But it appears that Iran is poised to respond to any Israeli attack with tremendous force.
The new leader of the IRGC is saying that whenever Israel attacks Iranian interests anywhere in the region from now on the response will come from Iran itself…
The head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, said Sunday that Iran would respond to future Israeli attacks on Iran-linked targets from Iranian soil, potentially opening the door for escalatory responses from Israel. “We have decided to create a new equation and it goes this way: from now on if the Zionist regime anywhere attacks our interests, assets, figures and citizens, we will reciprocally attack it from the origin of Iran,” Salami told a state-run television station.
That is a major shift in Iranian strategy.
And Iran’s Supreme National Security Council has announced that if Israel strikes Iran directly, “it will face a response at least tenfold greater and of similar nature”…
It comes as Iran today vowed to launch ten times the amount of missiles in a fresh strike against Israel if it unleashes a retaliatory hit on Tehran.
The new threat could see 1,460 missiles hurled at Israel as world leaders hold their breath to see if an “uncontrollable war” breaks out in the Middle East.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council vowed to retaliate if Israel launches a counter-strike – for which IDF plans have already been drawn up.
The Council issued a chilling warning that said: “If the Zionist regime persists in its evil actions against Iran, by any means and to any extent, it will face a response at least tenfold greater and of similar nature.”
I believe that the Iranians are serious.
So if Israel strikes Iran, they will also need to be ready to deal with Iran’s response.
And this time around they won’t be pulling any punches.
According to one Iranian official, the response could even include a weapon that Iran has never used before…
The Speaker of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security Commission, Abolfazl Amouei has stated tonight that Iran is prepared to utilize “A Weapon it has never before Used” if Israel decides to launch a Retaliatory Attack.
Sadly, I don’t expect either side to back down. Israel will hit Iran, and then Iran will strike back. And then it will officially be on. Meanwhile, action continues to heat up on the northern front. On Monday, there were more IDF airstrikes in southern Lebanon…
Israeli fighter jets struck additional buildings the IDF says are used by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
The IDF says the Hezbollah sites were hit in the villages of Markaba and Majdal Zoun.
Troops also shelled areas near Jabal Blat with artillery to “remove a threat,” the army says.
And four IDF soldiers were reportedly wounded after a small group crossed over the Lebanese border…
Four Israeli soldiers were wounded Monday after a bomb was detonated inside Lebanese territory, in a rare moment where it appears the IDF was seeking to breach the border.
Hezbollah took responsibility for the explosion, saying it planted the bomb near the border. Hezbollah militants “planted explosive devices in the Tal Ismail area” inside Lebanon, and detonated them after Israeli soldiers “crossed the border,” according to a statement from the group.
The IDF subsequently acknowledged the four soldiers were injured, and it was reported by news wires as happening “hundreds of meters within Lebanon.”
One of the soldiers has been listed by the IDF as “severely injured” after the explosion was set off “in the area of the northern border” – according to the military statement.
Israeli army radio admitted that “Golani fighters carried out an operation near the border, tens of hundreds of meters away from Israeli territory,” and that the troops were injured “inside Lebanese territory.”
We have been waiting for this war for a very long time. Now it is here.
Here in the western world, we will probably see enormous protests in our major cities and the price of gasoline is likely to go absolutely nuts. But in the Middle East, the consequences could be much more severe.
The Iranians and the Israelis have both been preparing for this showdown for decades.
The Iranians would like to see Israel wiped off the face of the map, and the Israelis are absolutely determined to do whatever it takes to prevent that from happening. In a conflict where the stakes are this high, it can be very easy to panic.
Both sides have some surprises up their sleeves, and unfortunately I have a feeling that it will not be too long before some of those surprises are finally unveiled.
Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
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.
