President Trump delivered a clear message to Iran’s leaders during an interview in Dearborn, Michigan: any move to hang protesters would trigger “very strong action” from the United States. Speaking to CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil, he emphasized awareness of the massive loss of life already unfolding in the streets of Tehran and beyond.
Reports indicate that at least 12,000 people have perished in the crackdown, with some estimates climbing as high as 20,000, as footage emerges of body bags piling up in morgues. This bloodshed follows weeks of nationwide unrest sparked by crippling economic woes, internet blackouts, and a regime increasingly isolated on the world stage.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump urged Iranians to “KEEP PROTESTING” and “TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” while assuring them that “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.” He canceled all scheduled meetings with Iranian officials until the violence ceases, signaling a complete freeze in diplomatic channels.
During the interview, he described aid to the Iranian people arriving in “different forms,” including economic support, though he stopped short of detailing military involvement. This stance builds on last year’s U.S. airstrikes that targeted three key Iranian nuclear sites—Fordow, Natanz, and another facility—degrading their program by one to two years according to officials.
The president’s endgame? “Victory,” plain and simple. When pressed on what that looks like, Trump pointed to a string of decisive actions from his administrations: the raid that ended ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019, the 2020 strike eliminating Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, and just days ago, the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in a swift U.S. operation on January 3.
“We don’t want to see what’s happening in Iran happen,” he said. “If they want to have protests, that’s one thing, when they start killing thousands of people, and now you’re telling me about hanging—we’ll see how that works out for them. It’s not going to work out good.”
These protests, raging since late December 2025, mark a renewed wave of defiance against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s iron-fisted rule. Activists report security forces operating under “shoot to kill” orders, with thousands detained and communications severely restricted. The death toll varies in reports—some peg it at over 2,000, others closer to 646—but the scale of repression hasn’t been this severe since the 1979 revolution. Iran’s economy, battered by sanctions and internal corruption, has fueled the outrage, but whispers persist of deeper machinations: regime insiders possibly stoking chaos to consolidate power, or foreign influences from Beijing propping up Tehran amid global realignments.
Critics of the previous administration argue that years of appeasement—lifting sanctions without real concessions and ignoring Iran’s sponsorship of terror groups—emboldened the mullahs to this point. Trump’s return to the White House has shifted the dynamic, with Tehran now warning it’s “prepared for any move” by the U.S. Yet, as bodies mount, questions linger about shadowy alliances: Iran’s ties to proxy militias in the region, or even covert support from adversaries aiming to distract America from domestic priorities.
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For many watching from afar, this crisis echoes ancient struggles against tyranny, where the oppressed rise against rulers who defy basic human dignity. Iran’s Christian minority, long persecuted with church closures and arrests for faith alone, finds itself caught in the crossfire, their plight a stark reminder of the regime’s intolerance. Scripture speaks to such times—Psalm 82 calls for defending the weak and oppressed from the wicked—but action on the ground demands resolve.
Trump’s warnings come at a pivotal moment, with Iranian lawmakers admitting the risk of “greater unrest” if grievances go unaddressed. He has limited military options left after the 2025 strikes, but his track record suggests he’s not bluffing. As protesters chant for freedom, the world waits to see if Tehran’s defiance will force America’s hand, potentially reshaping the Middle East once more.
The Iranian people, enduring blackouts and brutality, desire a future free from fear. Trump’s pledge of support offers a glimmer of hope, but the path ahead remains fraught with danger. If hangings proceed, as some fear with activists like Erfan Soltani facing execution, the response could be swift and severe.
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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.
It would be a momentous occasion and a huge blow to Russian/Chinese influence in the area. It would also remove one of the major contributors to terrorist groups worldwide. I remember when Persians were decent, intellectually driven people. Granted, that was in the 70’s.