(DCNF)—In the lead-up to Operation Epic Fury in Iran, and in the days after the conflict began, commentators on both sides of the aisle who offered predictions on how things might unfold frequently missed the mark.
President Donald Trump announced the start of military operations against Iran in a post to Truth Social on Feb. 28, confirming weeks of speculation that the U.S. was preparing to act. But predictions from pundits on both sides of the political debate before and in the days after that announcement have proved far more hit-or-miss.
Podcaster Dave Rubin, for example, predicted in a March 10 livestream that the Strait of Hormuz would not be closed to maritime traffic and that energy prices would not increase as a result of the operation. Similarly, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright described the conflict with Iran as simply “a disruption on the way to a much better place” during a March 8 appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”
However, at least ten attacks were carried out on merchant vessels in the strait from Feb. 28 t0 March 8, maritime news service gCaptain reported, and traffic through the chokepoint ground to a halt. Additionally, oil prices have climbed steadily since Operation Epic Fury began, with WTI Futures Crude Oil closing at $98.32 Friday, up over $30 from the market’s $67.02 close on Feb. 27, the day before the conflict with Iran started, according to Investing.com.
And fuel prices are not the only potential economic shock. The president of the American Farm Bureau told the Associated Press that farmers could be in a “dire situation” due to the halt in traffic through the strait.
“We’re being told that many of our farmers that haven’t preordered their fertilizer and paid for it may not even obtain the fertilizer that they’re going to need during the season or for spring planting,” Zippy Duvall said.
Roughly half of the world’s production of two crucial agricultural fertilizer precursors, urea and sulfur, passes through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the Fertilizer Institute. Saudi Arabia, which has been targeted by Iranian missile and drone strikes, is also the leading supplier of phosphates, another crucial fertilizer precursor, to the United States, the Fertilizer Institute reported.
Other supporters of military action, such as the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), argued that the Iranian regime was close to collapse prior to the start of military action.
“It is now not just possible, but likely, that the regime will implode before it can excavate the enriched uranium buried by American bombs and rebuild the centrifuges destroyed by Israeli ones,” JINSA said in a Feb. 4 article by Blaise Misztal and Johnathan Ruhe.
Iran’s Assembly of Experts named Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei as the replacement for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on March 8. The regime launched numerous attacks on U.S. bases, killing seven personnel and wounding dozens, but the younger Khamenei has not been seen in public since he was named supreme leader.
Other supporters of the operation have modified their expectations quickly. During a March 17 appearance on “Hannity,” Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said there was “no reason to invade” Iran to “take” the nation’s key oil distribution center of Kharg Island and win the war.
Five days later, Graham left the door open to ground troops when asked about taking Kharg Island during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” that drew backlash from the left and the right.
Skeptics of the war have also offered some inaccurate predictions, including claims that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the United States and Israel to target Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“The US/Israel did not strike yet because they can’t locate Khamenei. Stay hidden. Only trust one person. Remove digital devices and medical devices,” commentator KimDotcom posted on Feb. 22. “If they can’t locate you they cannot win.”
Trump confirmed Ali Khamenei’s death in a post on Truth Social on the afternoon of Feb. 28, hours after he announced Operation Epic Fury. Some American leaders, including Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, have also questioned whether Ali Khamenei’s son Mojtaba is alive.
Others predicted that Israel would be isolated after a strike on Iran, with Southern Africa Eye noting on Feb. 25 that Arab countries had initially refused permission for American bases to be used in the strikes.
After Iran began launching missile and drone strikes against targets in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, Arab countries have since been backing the American-Israeli campaign. Even the radical Islamic terrorist group Hamas condemned Iran’s strikes on Arab countries.
“While the movement affirms the right of the Islamic Republic of Iran to respond to this aggression by all available means in accordance with international norms and laws, it calls on its brothers in Iran not to target neighboring countries,” the group said in a March 14 statement.
Other skeptics, like former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, claimed that Iran did not pose an “imminent threat” to the United States.
“That just simply did not exist,” Kent told Tucker Carlson on Tuesday.
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani, reportedly a crucial figure in providing advanced IED components that were used by various insurgent groups, was allegedly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In January, then-Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei posted multiple threats against Trump on social media, including depicting the president, who survived two assassination attempts in the 2024 election, in a coffin.
Some Congressional Democrats predicted that a wider war would break out as a result of the military campaign targeting Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
“What are we getting out of this? We’re not getting regime change to a democracy. We’re not going to eliminate their nuclear program. We are going to have regional war breaking out,” Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy told “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan during a March 1 appearance.
In a Monday morning Truth Social post, Trump announced he had ordered the Department of War to delay plans to hit Iranian energy infrastructure after saying that Iran had sought talks.
“I am pleased to report that the United States of America, and the country of Iran, have had, over the last two days, very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Based on the tenor and tone of these in depth, detailed, and constructive conversations, which will continue throughout the week, I have instructed the department of war to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five day period, subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions.”
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].
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.
