(End of the American Dream)—When I heard that the IDF had just bombed the Ministry of Defense and the Presidential Palace in Damascus, I could hardly believe it. I thought that we would have at least a short period of relative stability in the Middle East, but perhaps I was wrong. In my opinion, Israel and the new government in Syria are now essentially in a state of war. According to Israeli authorities, the IDF has already conducted 160 airstrikes inside Syrian territory and they are fully prepared to conduct even more…
As of Wednesday afternoon, the IDF had undertaken 160 aerial attacks on Syrian regime forces in and around the vicinity of Sweida in southern Syria, where Israel says the regime’s forces are slaughtering Syrian Druze.
In addition, the IDF has attacked, and possibly destroyed, Syria’s Defense Ministry, and also attacked part of the Presidential Palace in Damascus. Dozens or more Syrian regime forces are said to have been killed in IDF attacks.
IDF sources said that the military is ready for a multi-day campaign to convince Syrian regime forces to withdraw from Sweida and leave the Syrian Druze their autonomy.
I don’t know why this isn’t getting a lot more attention from major news outlets in the United States.
The airstrikes that hit the Ministry of Defense and the Presidential Palace in Damascus were extremely dramatic, and it is being reported that they sparked “panic in the streets”…
“The heavy blows have started” Israel’s defense minister Israel Katz has posted to X above a video (below) showing a Syrian news presenter abruptly taking shelter after a massive explosion in central Damascus.
The rare daytime aerial attack by Israel in the heart of Damascus created panic in the streets, and quickly after huge columns of smoke lingered over the downtown area. There are casualties, with state news agency SANA quoting the Health Ministry as saying that at least three were killed and nine people wounded in the Israeli attacks.
If you have not seen footage of the airstrikes in Damascus yet, I would highly recommend checking it out.
There are reports that prominent mosques in Syria are already calling for jihad against Israel. If all-out war erupts, the IDF will not hold back.
Could this be the beginning of the end for Damascus?
The reason why Israel is intervening is because Druze residents of Sweida are reportedly being slaughtered…
The violence began with recent clashes between local Druze and Bedouin populations around the town of Sweida in southern Syria. Community leaders, activists and Israel’s military said the violence worsened after government forces intervened.
On Wednesday, Druze residents of Sweida reached by phone described scenes of executions, house burnings and looting. Several thousand residents fled toward the Jordanian border to escape the violence, while thousands more fled into the countryside.
There is a large Druze population in northern Israel, and many of them started pouring across the border to protect the Druze that were under assault in Sweida.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is urging them to stay home and let the IDF take care of things…
“My brothers, Druze citizens of Israel, the situation in Suwayda, the situation in southwestern Syria, is very serious.
The IDF is operating, the Air Force is operating, other forces are operating. We are working to save our Druze brothers and to eliminate the regime’s gangs.
And now I have one request of you: You are citizens of Israel. Do not cross the border.
You are putting your lives at risk; you could be killed, you could be kidnapped, and you are hindering the IDF’s efforts. Therefore, I ask you—return to your homes, let the IDF operate.”
At this point, Israeli officials are assuring us that there are absolutely no plans to send ground forces into the affected areas, but there are military units that are now being sent toward the northern border…
To deal with the ongoing crisis, including border issues, the IDF is transferring parts of the 35th Brigade from Gaza to the North and may also transfer the 98th Division northward if necessary.
Other reservists could also be called to the North, and there are multiple closed military zones on the Israeli-Syrian border.
Turkey expended a tremendous amount of effort to overthrow the Assad regime, and they are very closely allied with the radicals that are now running Syria.
Needless to say, Turkey is not pleased with what is currently transpiring at all, and they have let the Israelis know about it…
Turkey has conveyed its views regarding Israel’s air strikes on Syria to Israeli authorities via its intelligence agency, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Wednesday, adding Ankara was also in close contact with regional powers and the U.S.
If Israeli ground forces eventually do start heading toward Damascus, could that potentially spark a direct conflict between Israel and Turkey?
That will be something to watch.
Meanwhile, Newsweek is reporting that the Iranians are “threatening to raise uranium enrichment to weapons-grade levels and exit the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”…
Iran is threatening to raise uranium enrichment to weapons-grade levels and exit the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if Western powers move forward with reimposing United Nations sanctions, according to Iranian state media. The warning follows mounting pressure from the United States and its European allies.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the foreign ministers of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom agreed in a phone call Monday to set an August deadline for a nuclear agreement, Axios reported.
If no deal is reached by then, the three European powers plan to trigger the UN “snapback” mechanism, which would automatically reinstate global sanctions on Iran’s arms trade, banking sector, and nuclear program.
If the Iranians really do enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, I guarantee you they will get bombed again.
In anticipation of that, the Iranians have been feverishly rebuilding their air defenses, and they still have lots of ballistic missiles that they can throw at Israel…
Israel has estimated that even after its strikes, Iran likely still possesses some 1,500 medium-range ballistic missiles and 50% of its launching capabilities, reported Bill Roggio, senior fellow and editor of Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ (FDD) “Long War Journal.”
Similarly, Iranian expert Behnam Ben Taleblu told Fox News Digital that “Post strikes, the program still exists and, despite being handicapped, poses a significant regional threat.”
It appears that the war in the Middle East is far from over.
In fact, I think that we could see some huge surprises in the months ahead.
We really are living during a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, but a lot of people out there still don’t seem to understand this.
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.
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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.
