I am not a believer in spiritual prophecy, but prediction is no more than deduction from facts, and more accurate, in my opinion. In our current global circumstances, the facts support some pretty nasty consequences that can be the subject of prophecy as well. Israel’s April 8, 2026, massive bombing of Beirut and other parts of Lebanon by an estimated 50 aircraft in the space of less than 20 minutes is the most obvious recent example, costing hundreds of civilian deaths and thousands of injuries, many of them permanent. It must have seemed like an apocalypse to those affected, as Israel intended. But death and destruction have been widespread since February 28, including in Iran, the Persian Gulf states, and Israel itself.
What we have witnessed thus far may unfortunately be only a prelude. I am not predicting a global apocalypse, but war, conquest, famine, and death are clearly in our immediate future, unless something is done to prevent it. And I can think of only one thing that might do so. The problem is that the prospects of cooler heads prevailing or of reaching a “deal” seem rather remote, given the facts.
Fact #1: The US is amassing troops and armaments in the region. The number of prepositioned US combat troops may reach 50,000 or more. Combat and supporting aircraft are gathering at regional bases in Jordan, Iraq, Turkiye, and other locations, since Iranian missiles have largely rendered US bases in the Persian Gulf states unusable. Naval vessels, including up to three aircraft carriers, are mostly in waters at least 800 km off the Gulf of Oman, to avoid the range of Iranian missiles and other anti-ship defenses, although some have been deployed closer to (but not in) the Strait of Hormuz, to police Trump’s declaration of closure. It’s hard to imagine that these resources will be assembled without being used, absent a capitulation by Iran, which is equally inconceivable, if not more so.
Fact #2: The negotiating positions and teams of the US and Iran are unacceptable to each other. Iran agreed to meet in Islamabad and to send a high-level, professional plenipotentiary delegation after Trump’s statement that the Iranian 10-point proposal provided a “workable basis” for negotiation. The US team, on the other hand, consisted of the inexperienced and untrained Vice President J.D. Vance as the chief negotiator and presidential envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, none of whom were officially empowered to make decisions or set policy. Iran had previously refused to meet with Witkoff and Kushner because they take instructions as much from Netanyahu as from Trump. Nevertheless, the presence of the two at the meeting was tolerated by the Iranians as a show of Iranian patience. Upon arrival, the US delegation immediately renounced the Iranian “workable basis” 10-point plan, and essentially nothing was accomplished at the 21-hour meeting. Trump’s purpose behind the temporary two-week truce was apparently merely to buy time for the US to bring more military force into position.
Fact #3: Israel does not want a truce or pause in the war. Israel wants to destroy Iran, but this is not an objective that it can achieve without the US, and in fact, its contribution to such an objective is negligible. Nevertheless, it wants to pursue its side war to capture, depopulate, and annex South Lebanon – a territorial objective since before the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. Its efforts include major invasions into Lebanon in 1982, 2006, and 2024, and minor ones in between, each time repulsed by the Lebanese resistance, primarily Hezbollah. For Iran, all of the regional struggles with Israel are part of the same struggle, including not only Iran but also Palestine, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, and, until 2024, Syria. Thus, when Israel attacked Lebanon on April 8, 2026, a day after the truce was declared, only Trump’s insistence upon a total halt to all bombing prevented an immediate resumption of open warfare with Iran. If you don’t think Israel is the primary decision maker for US policy on Iran, count the number of visits by Netanyahu to Trump in the last year, since before the US-Israeli invasion of Iran in June, 2025, or the number of calls to Netanyahu and other Israeli officials by the US team in Islamabad during the negotiations with Iran. Israel can end the current fragile truce with Iran with a single air attack on Lebanon, a mere wag of the dog by its tail.
Fact #4: Neither Trump nor Netanyahu will back down. They both need a victory. Neither of these megalomaniacs is interested in diplomacy or compromise, only aggrandizement of power, territory, fortune, and legacy. But they have pushed Iran and its allies as far as they will go. Iran has lived under onerous economic sanctions for nearly half a century, and it is unwilling to do so anymore. Israel, with the help of its big but not-too-bright US brother, decided that it was time to do to Iran what had already been done to Palestine, Libya, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, and Syria. Iran was having none of it and refused to be the one to attack. The US was willing, but had insufficient justification to do so. So Trump told Netanyahu that if he wanted a war with Iran, Israel would have to attack first, in which case the US would join in support. That’s the way it was choreographed: Israel dropping the first bombs and missiles, the US next, and Iran responding after the other two. War is riding the red horse.
Fact #5: The Strait of Hormuz is impregnable, and the Iranians are capable of permitting or interdicting all maritime traffic in the strait. How is that possible? By now, most people in the world know what the Strait looks like on a map – a waterway wrapped around the Omani Musandam Peninsula, with the Iranian coastline wrapped 200 degrees or more around the waterway. Many of them also know that it, and the entire Persian Gulf, is a shallow body of water, with only the deepest portions suitable for tankers and supertankers, and that very long quays require heavy dredging to provide docking. I used to sail and jetski in those waters, so I got to know them. Obviously, in the very narrow strait, the deep waters are even narrower. The Iranian coastline that surrounds the horseshoe-shaped strait is roughly 400 km long and is almost entirely rocky, with cliffs and hills. It is essentially impregnable, and Iran has filled those cliffs with missiles, drones, and artillery set into caves and tunnels in the cliffs and hills, as well as miniature submarines armed with silent torpedoes and speedboats armed with missiles and 50mm machine guns. They have the means to block all traffic, both civilian and military, which are effectively sitting ducks during their passage. Blocking the strait removes 20% of the world’s oil and natural gas from the world market, as well as much of the world’s helium, sulfates, phosphates, and more than a third of the world’s fertilizer. Famine is riding the black horse.
But why? The human species has survived millennia, and even millions of years, if you include the entire homo genus. The risk of losing the species is vanishingly small despite the murderous intentions of our leaders. So, what is the benefit of the current war with Iran – or last year’s, for that matter? Iran was never a threat to US security, much less its existence. Iran has always been interested in a mutually beneficial relationship with the US. As far as I can tell, there are essentially two reasons for US hostility toward Iran. One is that the US does not willingly tolerate any nation that does not allow itself to be exploited for the one-sided benefit of the US and its richest and most powerful individuals and corporations. Iran refuses to bend over and is therefore a bad example to other nations. This is not unique to Iran but common to any nation that values its self-respect. The second reason is the existence of the aggressive, expansionist, and exclusivist (racist) state of Israel in the same region as Iran. Israel is a threat to all the states of the region, and has made little secret of its long-term intention to seize much of their land (“from the Nile to the Euphrates”) and to empty it of its non-Jewish population. It’s why it expelled 60% of the majority Palestinian population in Palestine in 1948-50, and expelled hundreds of thousands more in 1967. It’s also why Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the rest of Palestine. It’s why Israel expelled 94% of the inhabitants of the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967 and then annexed it. It’s why Israel has seized even more of southern Syria since December, 2024. It’s why they seized the Sinai Peninsula in 1956, though President Eisenhower later forced them to return it. Conquest is riding the white horse, and on the pale horse is Death, the consequence of all the others.
If the United States stayed out of the picture and let the people of the region handle the issue, Israel would have no choice but to respect the rights of all the inhabitants. But Israel has chosen the course of manipulating and controlling the internal politics, foreign policy, and power structure of the United States and other mostly Western countries in order to extort their support for Israel’s aggressive and racist ambitions. This is the major reason for the otherwise irrational and counterproductive policies of nations captive to Zionist influence. Israel is ready to fight Iran to the last American.
It is for this reason that I hear the hoofbeats of the Four Horsemen. I see resumption of the war as nearly inevitable, given the facts laid forth here. And the consequences will be devastating to much of the world. I don’t think Iran will lose, although it will suffer quite a lot. Let us remember that Colin Powell assembled more than half a million combat troops to invade Iraq, a country 1/4 the size of Iran, with half the population. For Iran, 50,000 soldiers are equivalent to Tennyson’s Light Brigade in comparison to the Iranian army. When it’s all over, the US will find itself making a rather sudden transition to a much-reduced status as a global power. Israel will also be greatly humiliated and may lose its appeal, with both current citizens emigrating and potential ones deciding not to immigrate. The rest of the world will find passage through the Hormuz Strait more attractive than trading with Israel, since they will be forced to choose one or the other. Eventually, the Zionist nightmare will wither away, much like the Crusader kingdoms a millennium earlier.
You don’t need to remind me that at the beginning of this article, I said there might be a way to prevent a return to war. Some of you will have guessed what that is. It saddens me to say it, and I suggested it in an earlier article, but the faster Iran can create and test a nuclear device, the sooner it will gain its security and sovereignty without excessive loss of life, and with a chance for more constructive relations with other countries. Ask Pakistan, India, and North Korea.