(ZeroHedge)—Summary: The White House held a high stakes presser Thursday afternoon, as President Donald Trump also again convened his top national security officials in the situation room to hear intelligence officials and make key decisions on the Israel-Iran war, just prior. Of course, the biggest question that remains is: will the US directly enter the war against Iran?
- White House quoting Trump: Amid speculation regarding negotiations with Iran, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next 2 weeks.
- Leavitt: Trump thinks ‘substantial chance’ of Iran negotiations
- Leavitt: Witkoff has been in touch with Iran
- Leavitt: Trump always interested in diplomatic solutions
- Leavitt: it’s the US belief that Iran has never been closer to a nuclear weapon
- Leavitt: Iran can and should make a deal or face consequences
- Leavitt: Trump remains in contact with Netanyahu
- Leavitt: Iran is in a weakened position and we have sent a deal
- Leavitt: Iran has all that it needs to achieve a nuclear weapon, it just needs a ‘decision’
Oil slides on the “two weeks” announcement, as the can gets kicked down the road:
The most pressing issues at stake:
- Last ditch diplomacy working? Reuters reports in a breaking development that Iran held direct talks with US over de-escalation and potentially restarting nuclear negotiations.
- The Guardian reports that Trump only wants to strike Iran only if the US can destroy the Fordow enrichment facility.
- Destruction of Fordow would at least require the 30k pound bunker buster bomb, but still may not be effective in ending Iran’s enrichment capacity.
- Netanyahu says that while regime change in Tehran is not the current goal, the option is on the table.
- Tactical nuke on the table?
- Will the Iranians close the Strait of Hormuz, choking off global oil shipping?
- Reports of US bases in the region taking protective and defensive measures
- Israeli intelligence official says ‘imminent collapse’ of Iranian government is “far from the truth” – NBC reports
- Iran is warning that a “third party intervention” would spark an immediate military response
- Netanyahu has said the US has been “helping a lot” – without defining specifics
WATCH (scheduled to begin at 1300ET):
Update(1210ET): Just an hour away from a high-stakes White House press briefing, and a report in The Guardian has really upped the ante…
Donald Trump has suggested to defense officials it would make sense for the US to launch strikes against Iran only if the so-called “bunker buster” bomb was guaranteed to destroy the critical uranium enrichment facility at Fordow, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
Trump was told that dropping the GBU-57s, a 13.6-tonne (30,000lb) bomb would effectively eliminate Fordow but he does not appear to be fully convinced, the people said, and has held off authorizing strikes as he also awaits the possibility that the threat of US involvement would lead Iran to talks.
The effectiveness of GBU-57s has been a topic of deep contention at the Pentagon since the start of Trump’s term, according to two defense officials who were briefed that perhaps only a tactical nuclear weapon could be capable of destroying Fordow because of how deeply it is buried.
Tactical nukes now?
And there’s much, much more that needs to be considered. Likely full American military entry in to the war would spiral into full regime change in Iran. What comes next?
Iran as a society is much larger, and with an even more complex ethnic division than neighboring Iraq… and we all remember the pandora’s box and US ‘forever war’ very well. Soon after Saddam’s toppling came the rise of ISIS and hellish decade-plus long Syrian proxy war. Have the politicians already forgotten? (or more likely they don’t care…) Adding to the chaos would be the IRGC likely closing the vital Strait of Hormuz – which would send oil prices skyrocketing.
By the day’s end we are likely to find out whether Trump will stick by being negotiator in chief… or war hawk in chief… will he listen to the likes of Tulsi Gabbard and Tucker Carlson, or to Lindsey Graham and Mark Levin? Meanwhile…
As Israel’s war with Iran nears the end of its first week, each side continued to inflict destruction from above in Thursday’s opening hours. In a development certain to be exploited by proponents of US intervention, the largest hospital in southern Israel reportedly received “extensive” damage after suffering a hit from an Iranian ballistic missile. Meanwhile, defying warnings of radiation dangers from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Israeli Air Force bombed Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, even though Iran modified it pursuant to the 2015 nuclear deal to make it incapable of producing weapons-grade plutonium.
In other important recent developments:
- Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said “the prime minister and I have instructed an escalation in the intensity of strikes against government targets in Tehran to destabilize the Ayatollah regime“
- Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that direct US participation in Israel’s war on Iran would spark a terrible spiral of escalation”
- President Trump has reportedly approved a Pentagon plan for attacking Iran, but is holding off on giving the green light as he continues to seek Iran’s capitulation to foregoing any uranium enrichment — something Iran views as an intolerable infringement on its sovereignty. “I may do it, I may not do it,” he told reporters.
- The foreign ministers of Iran, the UK, France and Germany are set to discuss the nuclear impasse in Geneva on Friday.
- MAGA conservatives continue to erupt in angry rejection of US involvement in the war Israel started, as evidenced by Tucker Carlson’s merciless evisceration of Iran hawk Ted Cruz in a viral interview
In its initial retaliatory strikes on Israel, Iran had largely confined its missile barrages to the night. However, after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) observed significant success in evading Israel’s highly-hyped Iron Dome, Iranian barrages are now increasingly coming in broad daylight, as they did on Thursday morning in a 30-missile strike that caused dozens of injuries, six of them severe:
One of Iran’s missiles struck Soroka Hospital in the southern city of Beersheba, with health officials saying the explosion caused extensive damage along with injuries. Iran said the missile was aimed at a nearby Israeli military intelligence facility; the Times said the nearest military facility it knows of is over two kilometers away. Verified by the Times, this video captures the sound of the thunderous explosion blast and the huge mushroom cloud that rose up from the impact at the hospital:
Israeli President Isaac Herzog emphasized that the hospital has a staff of “Jews and Arabs work[ing] side by side…caring for Israelis of all faiths and our neighbors the Palestinians.” Thanks in large part to a Wednesday evacuation of the floor that was struck, no fatalities have been reported at the hospital, and only minor injuries. Israeli officials quickly condemned the attack. “The missile fired toward Soroka Medical Center is an act of terror and crosses a red line,” Health Minister Uriel Buso told Times of Israel. Israeli critics will be quick to point out Israel’s enormously destructive campaign in Gaza has damaged or destroyed 94% of the hospitals in the territory.
The Iranian barrage also caused major damage in the major city of Ramat Gan, an important business and educational hub just 5 kilometers east of Tel Aviv. With many modern skyscrapers, Ramat Gan has been nicknamed “the Manhattan of Israel.” Some of those shiny skyscrapers were shattered on Thursday morning, as two people were seriously injured:
On the other side of the war map, Israeli bombs and missiles rained down on Iran, with the Israeli military announcing 40 fighter jets hit dozens of facilities, including the Arak heavy water reactor, and a facility in Natanz that Israel claims Iran is using to develop a nuclear weapon. In March, the US intelligence community said it continues to conclude that, true to its decades of assurances, Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon.
Ironically, Israel’s attack on Arak helps draw attention to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal that Trump withdrew the United States from in 2018, sowing the seeds of the war that’s raging today. In compliance with that deal, Iran filled the heavy water reactor core with cement so it would be incapable of producing weapons-grade plutonium. Other JCPOA modifications were also in progress at the Arak facility. In announcing its Thursday strike, the IDF even referred to it as the “inactive nuclear reactor in Arak” — which only helps underscore the fact that the original nuclear deal was fully achieving its purpose, and it was only discarded in deference to Israel and its Western collaborators looking for a false pretense for war, one that’s astonishingly similar to the one used for the disastrous invasion of Iraq.
Earlier in the day, Israel had warned Iranians to evacuate from the vicinity of the reactor, using social media posts that featured satellite imagery of the facility in a red circle. However, Israel’s warning came after reports that Iranians were enduring a near-total loss of internet access more than 12 hours at the last report. The outage was reportedly the work of the Iranian government; the New York Times said the move was likely motivated in part by fear of Israeli cyberattacks. Earlier this week, Israel’s US ambassador cryptically promised “some surprises on Thursday night and Friday that will make [Israel’s explosive-beeper] operation [in Lebanon] almost seem simple.”
Bypass Big Tech Censors
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.
