(Zero Hedge)—On Saturday we were among the first outlets to report that the United States is preparing to deploy THAAD anti-ballistic missile systems in Israel, a major development which will put American troops directly in harm’s way (or… boots on the ground) amid the tense showdown with Iran.
The Pentagon in follow-up statements to the NY Times has confirmed the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) systems will be sent to Israel, and that about 100 American troops will operate them.
This means that at least 100 American soldiers will be placed in positions likely to be targeted by another potential barrage of ballistic missiles from Iran, at a moment Israel is preparing its own counterattack in the wake of the the Oct.1st strikes (which witnessed about 200 missiles sent) on Israeli territory from the Islamic Republic. Each full missile battery and associated systems cost American taxpayers some $800 million to $1 billion.
All of this follows the Pentagon having weeks ago deployed thousands more US troops to the broader region amid escalation in Lebanon. Some of those forces were sent to Cyprus, and others likely to Gulf countries or possibly Jordan.
The Pentagon has tried to deflect from language which portrays the obvious: that without Congressional authorization American troops are entering an escalating overseas war zone to defend a foreign country.
The NY Times acknowledged the following exchange:
When asked on Sunday, Mr. Biden said only that he had ordered the Pentagon to deploy the system “to defend Israel. General Ryder said in his statement that the battery would “augment Israel’s integrated air defense system.” It was not immediately clear how quickly the missile defense system and troops announced on Sunday would arrive in Israel.
“This action underscores the United States’ ironclad commitment to the defense of Israel, and to defend Americans in Israel, from any further ballistic missile attacks by Iran,” the statement said. “It is part of the broader adjustments the U.S. military has made in recent months to support the defense of Israel and protect Americans from attacks by Iran and Iranian-aligned militias.”
So interestingly this is the new talking point from the national security state: Americans are being deployed to defend Americans who happen to still be in Israel. This certainly marks a new and interesting rationale.
This big “gift” is being sent to Israel even after rising tensions between Netanyahu and Biden…
So by deploying THAAD to Israel, we're not really solving the problem, just incentizing Iran to build up more missiles. So what we are actually doing is tieing ourselves further into the Israel-Iran missile/BMD race for only short term benefits.
— Decker Eveleth (@dex_eve) October 13, 2024
One regional observers has observed that this is Netanyahu’s longtime dream come true:
Journalist Séamus Malekafzali argued the U.S. deployment of troops and the THAAD system shows that “the Israelis are clearly planning something for Iran that is going to cause a retaliation they know their own systems are unable to take.”
“U.S. troops being deployed to Israel in this matter is seismic,” Malekafzali added. “The U.S. military is now inextricably involved in this war, directly, without any illusions of barriers. Netanyahu is as close as he has ever been to his ultimate wish: making the U.S. fight Iran on Israel’s behalf.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Saturday had actually issued some soft criticism of Israel after two UN peacekeeping troops in south Lebanon were wounded by Israeli fire an a UNIFIL command post.
Austin “expressed his deep concern about reports that Israeli forces fired on U.N. peacekeeping positions in Lebanon as well as by the reported death of two Lebanese soldiers” in a phone call with his Israeli counterpart.
Netanyahu has spent a year treating Biden like a doormat, Biden is nonetheless sending American troops to protect Israel, and afterwards Biden will probably go back to pretending as if America has no meaningful leverage over Israel https://t.co/YNrHoxkb8y
— Gregg Carlstrom (@glcarlstrom) October 13, 2024
As for the missile battery contingent of 100 US troops being sent to Israel, likely there were already US special forces and commanders who have been in Tel Aviv and near Gaza in an “advisory” role. But this clearly marks a new much more direct role of US forces in the conflict, especially given the Iranians have already threatened that if hostilities escalate, anti-air batteries in Israel will come under attack.
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.
Almost a month ago I read that US 101st Airborne troops were being deployed to Israel. Since the THAAD unit wasn’t identified, is the deployment in this article a new batch of troops?
Can you say “Tripwire” boys and girls?
tyler burden is the warmunger and an antisemite