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Global weather patterns have begun to resemble a Hollywood disaster movie, and the mainstream media is starting to admit what many of us have known all along. Thanks to the “Super El Niño” that is now upon us, the second half of this year is going to be really crazy. Europe was just hit by the worst heatwave that it has ever experienced. Throughout all of last week, I was writing about the “mega heat dome” that brought unprecedented temperatures to many areas of the east coast. As I write this article, an absolutely colossal storm is causing apocalyptic damage in the Pacific Ocean, and a severe lack of rainfall threatens to cause a horrifying shortage of rice in India. It is often the case that the mainstream media needlessly freaks out about things, but in this case they are right on target.

I wish that I was exaggerating about the power of this Super El Niño, but I am not.

Every El Niño brings higher temperatures, but this one is really baking us…

We’re officially in an El Niño year, and as predicted, it’s a scorcher.

Record temperatures are already being recorded around the world, from the streets of New York to the icy shelves of the Antarctic. Even the surface waters of the world’s waterways are under unprecedented stress from the heat, with the average global ocean temperature breaking the all-time record high for the month of June.

We are less than a month into this El Niño.

How bad will conditions be once we get a few months down the road?

Even CNN is calling it “a Super El Niño”, and they are openly warning that “computer models are predicting this El Niño could be stronger than any other event”…

El Niño is poised to rapidly strengthen in the tropical Pacific Ocean during the next few months and is forecast to reach the upper echelon of intensity by the time it peaks in late fall to early winter, forecasters warn.

It’s already being referred to colloquially as a Super El Niño. Only a handful of events have reached that level of intensity in the last few decades, with the most recent one occurring in 2015 to 2016.

But now some computer models are predicting this El Niño could be stronger than any other event, back to at least 1950. “I think it’s fair to say that, depending on [the] model, the forecasts are close to unprecedented,” said Michael Tippett, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University, in an email.

CNN is not supposed to run articles like this.

But they just did.

One expert that CNN interviewed explained that the projections for the intensity of this El Niño have been getting higher each month…

“The consensus is definitely shifting towards an even stronger event,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist who is closely following El Niño model projections.

“The model runs have been consistently showing higher probabilities for a very strong event compared to a few months ago, and every month sees higher estimates,” he said. “Currently, the odds of seeing a record-strong El Niño event this year are quite large.”

It has become clear that this El Niño is going to dwarf any El Niño that has come before.

It is even going to surpass the Super El Niño of 1877-1878 that resulted in 50 million people starving to death.

India always receives less rain during an El Niño, and rainfall in many key rice producing areas is already way below normal…

The warning comes during India’s kharif planting season, when crops such as rice and maize depend heavily on the southwest monsoon. El Niño can weaken the summer monsoon across much of India, putting rainfed crops under stress during a critical growing period, the FAO said.

Between June 1 and 22, half of India had received deficient rainfall (-20% to -59% below the expected normal), while nearly a quarter had recorded large deficient rainfall (-60% to -99% less than the expected normal), according to the categories used by the India Meteorological Department (IMD).

The FAO analysis, based on 41 years of satellite data from its Agricultural Stress Index System, identifies a broad belt of elevated drought risk across Asia — from Pakistan and India through Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, and further east to the Philippines, Indonesia and Timor-Leste.

The world is not going to grow enough rice this year.

In fact, the amount of rice grown won’t even be close to enough to feed everyone.

That is very troubling news, because more than half of the population of the world is heavily dependent on rice…

Over half the world’s population relies on rice. India and China grow more than half of the world’s supply, and rice supplies more than half of all daily calories in countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia.

Poorer households spend the largest share of income on food, so price spikes hit them first and hardest. In 2007-08, rice prices roughly tripled, food riots broke out in dozens of countries, and in Haiti, the unrest helped bring down the prime minister. Securing rice is about more than food – it underpins public order.

During this “Super El Niño”, some parts of the planet will experience drought, while others will get hammered by absolutely gigantic storms.

Just hours ago, a monstrous “super typhoon” with frighteningly high winds absolutely pummeled the island of Rota…

A “super typhoon” with equivalent force to a category-5 hurricane made landfall on the U.S. island of Rota in the Pacific on Monday, the National Weather Service said, warning of “catastrophic damage and (a) life threatening situation.”

“The western eyewall of Super Typhoon Bavi is currently moving over the island of Rota. The latest forecast intensity is at 180 mph (290 kph) as it passes over Rota,” the NWS said. “Catastrophic winds exceeding 150 mph will continue across Rota during eyewall passage.”

The weather system also brought extremely strong winds and lashing rain to other parts of the Northern Marianas and the nearby separate U.S. territory of Guam, collectively home to around 210,000 people.

Nearly every structure on Rota has been flattened.

According to the National Weather service, the island will be “uninhabitable for weeks”…

Before the NWS had said that a direct hit on Rota would make most of the island “uninhabitable for weeks, perhaps longer. Many non-concrete, non-reinforced homes will be destroyed, with total roof failure and wall collapse.”

“Nearly all trees will be snapped or uprooted and power poles downed. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last for weeks to possibly months,” it said.

How would you like to be without power for months?

Now Super Typhoon Bavi is headed for Taiwan and China…

Bavi is expected to produce destructive wind gusts around Taiwan and across eastern China from Friday into Monday. Wind gusts up to 160 mph (260 km/h), with an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ of 200 mph (320 km/h), are anticipated and will result in power outages, structural damage and logistical delays.

The super typhoon is expected to maintain its intensity or strengthen slightly as it tracks west-northwest through at least Thursday, July 9, local time. Bavi is expected to impact Taiwan and eastern China from Friday into Monday.

More giant storms are coming as 2026 rolls along.

You can count on that.

Meanwhile, the weather has been so hot and so dry in Europe, and this has produced ideal conditions for huge wildfires to erupt…

Thousands of people were evacuated in southern France on Monday as ‘catastrophic’ wildfires ravaged the region, while poisonous clouds swept through Greece and Costa Brava in Spain was put on alert.

It comes as temperatures across Europe are on the rise again, predicted to reach 40C in parts still suffering the aftermath of a recent record-breaking heatwave.

Hundreds of firefighters are battling blazes that have devastated more than 19,000 hectares (42,000 acres) of land – an area more than twice the size of Manhattan – across Portugal, Spain, France and Greece.

This is no ordinary heatwave.

Week after week, Europe is getting absolutely cooked, and a lot of people are dying. For example, just check out what has been happening in the Netherlands…

More than 3,500 people died in the Netherlands during last week’s extreme heat, according to provisional mortality figures from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). The number is about 16 percent higher than what was expected, based on seasonal trends.

RIVM said there were around 480 excess deaths compared with expected levels, with most fatalities among people aged 80 and older. Proportionally, the highest impact was seen in the east and south of the Netherlands, where temperatures were highest during the heat period.

The RIVM noted that the figures are not yet complete, as it can take several weeks for deaths to be officially registered.

Of course people have been dying from the heat in the U.S. as well.

At this point, we are being told that at least 25 residents of New Jersey have died as a result of heat exposure just since Thursday…

At least 25 people died in New Jersey since Thursday amid a sweltering heat wave.

Temperatures soared into the triple digits over the Fourth of July holiday weekend in New Jersey, New York, DC and other East Coast states.

Power outages in New Jersey and New York reportedly affected 1 million customers.

According to officials, many of the deceased were found in their homes with no air conditioning.

After experiencing an extremely hot weekend, now the east coast is facing the threat of severe flash flooding…

A life-threatening flash flood threat is increasing for nearly 60 million people across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and southern New England, with more rounds of heavy rain expected to soak the region through Monday night.

Heavy rain and thunderstorms from this weekend saturated the soil across the region, creating prime conditions for flash flooding Monday, particularly in the New York City metro area.

All over the world, this “Super El Niño” is going to produce monster storms, extreme heat and severe drought in 2026.

We were already experiencing a worldwide food crisis before this “Super El Niño” came along, and so there is no way that we are going to avoid very serious global food shortages.

In fact, the number of people on our planet that are experiencing acute hunger was already at an all-time record high before the war with Iran started.

What we are facing is not a theoretical disaster that may or may not happen someday.

It is happening right now.

We are in far more trouble than most people realize, and we are going to witness so much chaos in the months ahead.

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.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

Did you know that the number of Americans that are out of work right now is far higher than it was at any point during the Great Recession? I know that sounds crazy, but I will prove it to you in this article. A whopping 111 million Americans do not have a job, and we are spending more than a trillion dollars a year on the social safety net that supports them. Of course we cannot afford to do this, because the national debt has already reached 39 trillion dollars and it is growing at an astounding rate. If we do not fix our economy, disaster is inevitable.

The bureaucrats in Washington keep telling us that the unemployment rate is low even though there are vast numbers of adults all around us that are not working.

The way that they are able to do this is by dumping almost everyone that is not working into a category known as “not in labor force”.

This allows them to keep the official rate of unemployment suppressed even as the labor force participation rate hits an insanely low level…

On the surface, a June drop in the unemployment rate helped provide some upside to what was an otherwise downbeat jobs report — but it was for all the wrong reasons.

That’s because the decline in the jobless level to 4.2%, the lowest in a year, came largely from an exodus of workers from the labor force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data Thursday.

In fact, the measure of the working-age population either employed or looking for a job slid to 61.5%, the lowest since March 2021. Excluding the Covid-era jobs market, it was the lowest labor force participation rate in exactly 50 years.

Today, there are just over 7 million Americans that are officially unemployed.

That doesn’t sound bad at all.

But they rarely mention those that are considered to be not in the labor force. This is how the Federal Reserve defines that category…

Persons who are neither employed nor unemployed are not in the labor force. This category includes retired persons, students, those taking care of children or other family members, and others who are neither working nor seeking work.

As you can see from the chart below, the number of people that they have been dumping into that category has grown dramatically since 1990.

Right now, there are 104 million Americans that do not have a job that are considered to be not in the labor force…

When you add the 7 million Americans that are officially unemployed to the 104 million Americans that are considered to be not in the labor force, you get a grand total of 111 million Americans that do not have a job right now.

At no point during the Great Recession did that combined figure ever reach 100 million.

That is how bad things are in the U.S. at this moment.

Of course the 111 million Americans that are not working need to be supported somehow.

Some of them are supported by other family members that have incomes coming in.

But most of them are either partially or totally supported by our social safety net.

According to the House Ways and Means Committee, we spend more than a trillion dollars a year on more than 80 different social safety net programs…

Buying Americans out of poverty is undermining incentives to work, with families living in poverty relying more on taxpayer-funded welfare checks than income from work, according to a newly released report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Costing well over $1 trillion, America’s social safety net encompasses more than 80 federal programs, and is discouraging beneficiaries from seeking income from work.

The report, which was requested by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (MO-08), shows low-income families are becoming increasingly dependent on government transfers. In 1979, families living below the poverty line earned about 60 percent of their income from work. In 2021, that number dropped to an all-time low of around 25 percent. The report also shows how the dramatic increase in dependency on government transfers for low-income families was accelerated by COVID-era benefits.

Read that first paragraph again.

I had no idea that it was this bad.

For over a decade I have been writing about America’s ongoing economic collapse, and now we have reached a very advanced stage.

If the federal government was not supporting them, tens of millions more Americans would be living in poverty right now.

So what would our society look like if we stopped borrowing gigantic mountains of money to fuel this system?

And each day, even more Americans are losing their places in the middle class because they are getting laid off.

In fact, it is being reported that Microsoft is preparing for yet another round of massive layoffs…

Microsoft is reportedly planning another round of layoffs, expected to be announced as early as next week.

The cuts will impact thousands of roles across sales, consulting, and the Xbox gaming division. Total layoffs will amount to less than 2.5%% of the company’s workforce.

Microsoft employs roughly 220,000 people across the globe. The company eliminated approximately 15,000 positions just last year — 6,000 layoffs in May 2025 and another 9,000 layoffs in July 2025.

But if we just throw the entire country into the “not in labor force” category, we can pretend that the unemployment rate is at 0.0 percent and that everything is just fine, right?

What a joke.

Of course most Americans that are actually working are really struggling these days.

Home prices in the U.S. have risen by about 60 percent since the beginning of the last pandemic, and at this stage housing in the U.S. is more unaffordable than it has ever been before…

Home prices have grown by roughly 60 percent since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to JP Morgan data. Mortgage rates are historically high, and have been so since 2022. And the U.S. homeownership rate hit its lowest level since 2019 last year, at 65 percent, according to Census data.

“I think right now the housing market is pretty unprecedented,” Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, told Newsweek. “We have the highest home prices that have ever been on record, along with pretty high mortgage rates. The mortgage rates aren’t the highest we’ve seen on record—they exceeded 18 percent in 1981—but they are higher than they have been for the last 10 years or so.

“And so housing affordability has gotten really bad, especially for young people who don’t already own homes. Breaking into the housing market is incredibly tough.”

How are young adults supposed to purchase homes in this environment?

Home prices have risen far faster than incomes have, and this has “put homeownership out of reach for millions of millennial and Gen Z Americans”…

Back in 1975, a typical home cost about 2.4 times as much as the average under-40 household earned in a year, a standard measure of housing affordability, according to a new report from Pew Research Center.

By 2019, that price-to-income ratio had risen to 2.9. In 2024, it reached 3.5.

Over the past decade, home prices have risen much faster than wages. The rising ratio of price to income, coupled with elevated interest rates, has put homeownership out of reach for millions of millennial and Gen Z Americans.

This is one of the biggest reasons why young adults are so angry.

They simply can’t afford to live normal lives.

Last year, the percentage of first-time homebuyers dropped to the lowest level ever recorded…

First-time buyers represented only 21% of all home purchasers in 2025, a record low, according to the National Association of Realtors. The typical age of a first-time buyer climbed to 40, an all-time high.

Meanwhile, virtually everything else is becoming more expensive too.

For example, the price of ground beef is up 13 percent over the past year, and that price of steak is up 16 percent over the past year…

The average price of ground beef was $6.75 per pound in May, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, up nearly 13% from a year ago and just below April’s record high of $6.90. Beef steak prices averaged $12.80 per pound, up 16% from a year earlier and the second-highest level on record.

Tens of millions of Americans are deeply hurting right now, and what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.

This is why I rant about the economy so much.

I hear from so many people out there that are in very real pain.

Decades of very foolish decisions have resulted in decades of economic decline, and now we really have reached a breaking point.

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.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

It is supposed to be hot on the 4th of July, but it isn’t supposed to be this hot. Temperatures will be 20 to 30 degrees above average in much of the eastern half of the country. I warned a few days ago that we were going to experience a “4th of July furnace”, and meteorologists are telling us that hundreds of new records could be established. Unfortunately, this entire summer is going to be extremely hot. The “Godzilla El Niño” that has now begun is going to mean the we will experience unusually hot weather, epic storms and severe droughts in key agricultural areas throughout the second half of this year. And that is really bad news, because it is being projected that the amount of wheat produced in the U.S. this year will be the lowest since 1877.

An absolutely gigantic heat dome is going to relentlessly bake half of the nation over the next few days, and CBS News is reporting that “more than 300 records are expected to be set by Saturday”…

This July Fourth could be the hottest on record for millions of Americans as a massive heat wave traps more than half of the United States under a heat dome through the holiday weekend.

Dangerously high temperatures continued to ramp up Thursday from the Midwest to the East Coast, forecasters said. Between daily high temperatures and warm overnight lows — which won’t be low enough to offer much relief — more than 300 records are expected to be set by Saturday.

That is nuts.

When is the last time that we saw over 300 records get set on the 4th of July?

The latest National Weather Service forecast says that in some areas high temperatures will go as high as 105 degrees and the heat index will go as high as 115 degrees…

If you live on the east coast, please take this heat wave very seriously.

It is going to be a monster.

Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New York City and Boston are all expected to hit triple digits…

Washington, D.C., is expected to experience its hottest Fourth of July on record, with temperatures reaching 101 degrees. From Thursday through Saturday, the city is forecast to endure its hottest three-day stretch of the year. Philadelphia could reach 104 degrees on Friday, while New York and Boston are also expected to hit 100 degrees.

I think that it is noteworthy that this will be happening at the exact moment when America’s 250th birthday will be celebrated in our nation’s capital.

According to the Washington Post, Washington D.C. will be among “the top 1.1 percent of the planet’s hottest places on Friday”…

What does D.C. have in common with desolate stretches of Africa’s Sahara, deserts in the Middle East and China’s Gobi Desert?

It has lots of hot air, of course.

So much hot air, in fact, that D.C. will find itself in the top 1.1 percent of the planet’s hottest places on Friday, when high temperatures will soar toward 105 degrees.

That is certainly not normal.

In New York, mobile medical vans that contain nurses and paramedics will be roaming the city looking for people to help…

For the first time, New York City is deploying vans staffed with nurses and paramedics who will hand out water, electrolytes and sunscreen, CBS News New York reported. They will also perform wellness checks, transport people to cooling centers and make in-home visits to vulnerable residents. The city is also opening cooling centers throughout the five boroughs.

This crisis will be a real test for Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

He is encouraging New Yorkers to set their air conditioning at 78 degrees to help conserve power…

Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani has ignited a GOP firestorm after urging residents to set their air conditioners to a certain temperature to help prevent strain on the city’s power grid.

It comes as New York City braces for a sweltering Fourth of July weekend with temperatures expected to soar into the triple digits.

In a post on X, Mamdani encouraged New Yorkers and business owners to conserve electricity as demand for cooling surges.

‘New York: it’s hot out there, and the power grid is working overtime to keep us cool. Set your AC to 78 degrees, turn off lights/electronics you’re not using, and unplug what you can.’

Needless to say, this suggestion is not going over very well, and a lot of New Yorkers plan to ignore it entirely.

But without a doubt there is going to be enormous stress on our power grids, and an emergency has already been declared for the largest power grid in the country…

With 160 million people in 30 states under alert for extreme temperatures, the U.S. Department of Energy has declared an emergency as a heat wave bears down on a huge part of the nation’s electrical grid.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright issued an Energy Emergency Alert, directing officials of the biggest electrical grid, PJM Interconnections in the Mid-Atlantic region, to take action to prevent blackouts and ensure essential operations like hospitals are fully functioning during the heat wave.

“Maintaining affordable, reliable, and secure power in the PJM service territory is non-negotiable,” Wright said in a statement on Tuesday.

When the 4th of July weekend is finally over, the focus will shift to the western half of the nation.

A new heat dome is coming, and it will afflict areas that are already being ravaged by drought and wildfires…

A new heat dome will build between the Rockies and the Pacific coast.

As the jet stream bulges northward in the West, an area of high pressure will build over the region. The setup will allow temperatures to trend upward initially from several degrees Fahrenheit next week to 10-20 degrees above the 30-year average by the middle of July.

The heat dome will bring the highest temperatures of the season so far — even eclipsing the extreme marks set during the spring heat waves in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Palm Springs, California.

When conditions are unusually hot, ticks love it.

And we are being told that this tick season “is expected to be worse than usual”…

This summer tick season is expected to be worse than usual. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports the highest rate of emergency room visits from tick bites since 2017 across most of the country.

“It’s definitely concerning to see new ticks in new areas and then diseases that follow,” said Rebecca Osborn, an epidemiologist for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

In a previous article, I discussed the fact that serious diseases that are carried by ticks are spreading like wildfire in many areas of the country.

This year, authorities are particularly concerned about alpha-gal syndrome and the Powassan virus…

“So, warmer temperatures can bring ticks into new areas,” Osborn said.

One type of tick health officials are keeping an eye out for is the lone star tick. It can carry alpha-gal, which can create a red meat allergy in infected people.

They’re also tracking Powassan, a virus that attacks the central nervous system and can lead to memory loss, difficulty speaking and seizures.

Meanwhile, the heat is also having a huge impact on America’s farmers.

Earlier today, I was astounded to learn that the amount of wheat that will be harvested in the United States this year is expected to be the lowest since 1877…

America is expected to harvest its lowest acreage of wheat since 1877, due to drought, scorched crops, high input costs and uncertainty in export markets.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service released estimates on June 30 that the total area of all wheat planted was 42.7 million acres in 2026, down six percent from the previous year. This was also 1 million acres below the agency’s March forecasts.

In 1877, there were 40 million people living in the United States.

Today, there are 342 million people living in the United States.

We are supposed to be one of the breadbaskets of the world, but the past 12 months have been extremely warm and exceedingly dry…

Over the past year, the U.S. has experienced unusually warm conditions—May 2025 to April 2026 marked the warmest 12-month period on record for America, according to NOAA, and many of the country’s largest wheat farming states were hit with severe drought. Droughts are known to significantly reduce crop yields as the heat and lack of water can damage crops and stunt their growth.

Romulo Lollato, a wheat specialist at Kansas State University, told news outlet High Plains Journal that a lot of the wheat in Kansas—one of the state’s largest wheat producers, alongside Oklahoma and Texas—was “very short,” which he said was a “sign of drought stress.”

Now a “Super El Niño” is here, and the outlook for the months ahead is not promising at all.

For more than a decade I have been warning about so many of the things that are playing out right in front of our eyes right now.

We are witnessing a simultaneous confluence of catastrophic events that is unprecedented in our history.

A “perfect storm” is now upon us, and it is only going to intensify throughout the remainder of this year and beyond.

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.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The crisis in the Strait of Hormuz is not even close to being resolved, and global oil supplies continue to get tighter and tighter. The world has been running an “oil deficit” for months, and we have been able to do that by running down commercial oil inventories and strategic national reserves. There was hope that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz would return to pre-war levels before things got really hairy, but that isn’t happening. In fact, in recent days only about 30 to 40 commercial vessels have been traveling through the Strait each day. Before the war, the average was about 120 to 130 commercial vessels per day. The vast majority of the commercial vessels that have been getting through the Strait have been heading away from the Persian Gulf. Very few are headed into the Persian Gulf for understandable reasons. So once the backlog of commercial vessels that have been trapped in the Persian Gulf is finally eliminated, the level of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz will likely drop to depressingly low levels.

So we should be thankful that the price of oil has dropped a bit lower for now, but it won’t stay that way.

And that will especially be true if war with Iran fully erupts again.

We have seen fighting flare up multiple times in recent weeks, and it certainly wouldn’t take much to push things over the edge.

On Wednesday, it was being reported that President Trump has been briefed on options for “a return to all-out war with Iran”…

President Trump has weighed a return to all-out war with Iran, holding multiple conversations in recent days with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine on more strikes, but has decided to stick with diplomatic talks for now, according to U.S. officials familiar with the discussion.

The conversations have centered on whether the U.S. should abandon negotiations and resume full-scale attacks on Iran, the officials said, a move some of them describe as “finishing the job.” While not making a final decision, Trump has told aides he believes another round of full-scale attacks could derail diplomacy and hurt Washington’s chances of ultimately dismantling Iran’s nuclear program.

I was quite surprised when I read that.

I didn’t think that Trump and his team had an appetite for more conflict right now.

Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi just used some very strong language in an extremely inflammatory social media post…

The terms of the Islamabad MoU are crystal clear and public for all to see.

POTUS has committed the U.S. to muzzling its pets in Tel Aviv. If they ignore their master, Iran will school them.

Any threat against our People and Leadership will receive Immediate Powerful Response.

This is a threat to attack Israel.

The Iranians are demanding that the Israelis must withdraw from Lebanon, but the Israelis continue to tell us that this will simply not happen…

Israel’s defense minister said Wednesday that forces would remain “indefinitely” in so-called security zones established in Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip.

“The IDF will not withdraw and will remain in the security zones in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza – indefinitely – to protect our residents and communities from jihadist elements,” Israel Katz said.

“We are fighting to change reality and bring security to the residents of the north,” he added, referring to communities along Israel’s border with Lebanon from which thousands of people have been evacuated due to the threat posed by Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

The Israelis are absolutely determined to stop the bombardment of their northern communities.

Since early March, Hezbollah has fired “more than 7,000 rockets, missiles and drones” into Israeli territory…

Israeli officials say Hezbollah has launched more than 7,000 rockets, missiles and drones into Israel since early March while embedding military infrastructure inside civilian areas and Christian villages in southern Lebanon.

The claims were made by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar during MUNI EXPO in Tel Aviv as Israel, Lebanon and the United States continue negotiations aimed at securing Hezbollah’s disarmament and a lasting peace agreement.

“Since March alone, Hezbollah has launched more than 7,000 rockets, missiles and drones from Lebanese territory into Israel,” Sa’ar said. “What country can accept this and not act to restore security to its citizens?”

It is inevitable that Hezbollah will fire more rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel.

In response, Israel will bomb southern Beirut again.

The Iranians have already told us that if Israel does that again they will fire ballistic missiles at Israel.

And once that occurs, the IDF will strike back extremely hard.

I don’t know what those that are convinced that there will be peace in the Middle East are smoking, but it must be really strong.

When more fighting erupts in the Middle East, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz will drop lower than it is now.

And that is very bad news, because even though the “Memorandum of Understanding” was signed a couple of weeks ago, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz continues to remain at very low levels…

Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz began to rebound Monday following weekend tit-for-tat strikes between the U.S. and Iran.

Reports from the maritime tracking firm Kpler said 40 vessels passed through the critical waterway on Monday, while 24 ships transited the strait on Sunday in addition to 39 ships on Saturday.

Almost all of the commercial vessels that are passing through the Strait are headed out.

Very few are headed in.

And many of the ships that are actually headed in are Iranian.

For now, most shipping companies continue to treat the Strait of Hormuz “as a war zone”…

Unions and shipping employers said in a statement Wednesday they will continue to designate the Strait of Hormuz as a war zone until at least July 9, maintaining double pay for seafarers in the area despite a fragile truce between the U.S. and Iran.

The status only covers ships whose companies are signatories of the International Bargaining Forum’s labor agreements — around 15,000 vessels worldwide, according to the IBF.

Seafarers covered by the agreement working on ships in the Strait of Hormuz and its surrounding waters get paid double, and have the right to refuse to sail into the area and request repatriation at the company’s expense, increasing costs for shipping companies.

This is really bad news for the global economy.

On top of everything else, Ukraine’s endless bombardment of Russian oil facilities has caused gasoline shortages all over Russia…

Fuel shortages across Russia have triggered a new political challenge for President Vladimir Putin, as a relentless Ukrainian drone campaign aimed at the country’s oil refineries has brought the war home for most ordinary Russians.

While Ukraine has targeted Russian energy facilities for years, the quantity and firepower of Ukrainian drones and missiles have risen. This has allowed Kyiv to hit refineries as far as Tyumen, 1,200 miles away in Siberia, and permitted the spectacular raid that broke through thick layers of air defenses and destroyed Moscow’s main refinery on June 18, the turning point of the current crisis.

Some 28% of Russia’s refining capacity was offline as of June 20, estimated Sergey Vakulenko, former head of strategy at Gazprom Neft, a large Russian oil company, and now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.

Russia is one of the largest oil producers on the entire planet.

But now the Russians are being forced to actually import fuel thanks to Ukraine.

Everything that I have shared in this article means that global supplies of oil are going to continue to become tighter and tighter in the weeks and months ahead.

In other words, the stage is being set for a severe global energy crisis and a mammoth global economic meltdown.

For the moment, many investors are still feeling very optimistic about things, but it won’t be too long before they are brutally blindsided by reality.

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.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

We all knew that this would be coming. In 2026, the rate of AI-related layoffs has greatly accelerated, and that means that large numbers of good paying jobs are suddenly disappearing from the economy. This is occurring when we are already facing one major crisis after another, and so the timing could not be worse. Many young people specifically chose a major in college that would prepare them for positions in the tech industry because those were supposed to be the jobs of the future. Unfortunately, the AI jobs apocalypse is wiping out those jobs the fastest.

Let me give you some cold, hard numbers that will clearly demonstrate what I am talking about.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of announced job cuts in the United States last month was the highest that we have seen during the month of May since the peak of the last pandemic…

U.S.-based employers announced 97,006 job cuts in May, up 16% from the 83,387 job cuts recorded in April, and up 3% from the 93,816 announced in the same month last year, according to a report released Thursday from global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

May’s total is the highest for the month since 2020, when 397,016 job cuts were recorded in May at the height of the pandemic. It also marks the third straight month that cuts have risen, climbing from 48,307 in February to 97,006 in May.

There is no way to spin those numbers to make them look good.

And for the third month in a row, artificial intelligence accounted for more layoffs than any other reason…

In May, Artificial Intelligence (AI) led all reasons for job cuts for the third month in a row, with 38,579 announced cuts. It is the highest monthly total ever recorded for the reason since Challenger began tracking it in 2023, and it accounted for 40% of all cuts announced in May — up from just 7% in January, 25% in March, and 26% in April. For the year, AI has been cited in 87,714 cuts, or 22% of all 2026 layoffs, already far surpassing the 54,836 attributed to the reason in all of 2025.

Read that last sentence again.

The number of AI-related layoffs in 2026 has already surpassed the grand total of AI-related layoffs for the entire year of 2025.

That is how fast things are now moving.

Needless to say, the tech industry is being hit the hardest.

At this point, tech layoffs are running 44 percent faster than last year…

So far this year, there have been an estimated 363 layoffs at tech companies this year, affecting nearly 150,000 people — a pace of about 974 people per day, 44% faster than last year — according to TrueUp, a tech job board and recruiting platform that also runs one of the most widely cited tech layoff trackers.

The trend appears to be accelerating. Tech layoffs hit their highest single month in two years last month, with nearly 40,000 cuts, and AI was the most-cited reason for layoffs across every industry for the third month running, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

There is no long-term loyalty in the tech industry anymore.

The moment that AI can do your work more efficiently than you can, you are in danger of being let go.

Some of you out there have personally experienced this.

During the past six months, we have seen some of the biggest names in tech radically transform their workforces…

Several major tech companies have announced significant workforce reductions this year while simultaneously ramping up investments in artificial intelligence.

Oracle disclosed recently that it has reduced its workforce by roughly 21,000 employees (4) over the past year. Meanwhile, Google has continued trimming staff (5) through performance reviews, buyout programs and reorganizations, with outside estimates suggesting between 1,500 and 3,000 engineering roles have been eliminated in 2026.

Meta also laid off roughly 8,000 employees earlier this year while shifting about 7,000 workers into AI-focused roles, highlighting how some companies are cutting jobs in certain areas while continuing to invest heavily in artificial intelligence.

This is just the beginning.

And it is going to spread to every industry.

If you can believe it, a major tobacco company just announced that it is planning to “cut about 20% of its workforce as it pursues an AI-driven ‌overhaul”…

British American Tobacco (BATS.L), opens new tab plans to cut about 20% of its workforce as it pursues an AI-driven ‌overhaul to lower costs and lift profits amid regulatory challenges and delayed launches.

The maker of Lucky Strike and Dunhill cigarettes said on Monday it would cut around 5,500 jobs and move roughly 3,500 roles to third-party firms, including Accenture . The restructuring would affect around 9,000 employees in total, but excludes the U.S., the company’s biggest ​market.

BitGo is another firm that is ruthlessly firing employees for AI-related reasons…

BitGo has joined the growing ranks of crypto firms slashing staff numbers as part of a pivot to AI.

The crypto custody and infrastructure company is cutting nearly 15% of its workforce, co-founder and CEO Mike Belshe said Thursday in a tweet that BitGo also filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

A lot of the workers that are hitting the bricks are relatively young.

In the past, it was fairly easy to find another tech industry job, but now that has completely changed.

In fact, it has become so difficult to find a tech job these days that many job seekers have resorted to “spraying and praying”…

To survive this nightmarish job market, candidates are now “spraying and praying,” as one career coach described it — or paying resume services to blast out thousands of CVs per day to game the system and land a gig. However, according to experts in the tech industry who spoke with SFGATE, this is only creating a vicious cycle of inefficiency that hurts both workers and companies.

According to a recent survey conducted by Robert Half, a Bay Area talent and business solutions firm, over 50% of hiring managers said that AI-generated resumes are “flooding the market,” making it difficult to weed out candidates who are actually qualified for roles. To combat this torrent of resumes, 33% of hiring managers are now using AI-detection tools and spending more time training employees on how to spot ones that feel authentic.

“Many hiring managers tell us it’s becoming harder to distinguish between applicants because AI-generated resumes often use similar language, formatting and keywords,” Terah Brossart Daniels, a technology jobs expert with Robert Half, said. “Another issue is authenticity. A resume may look impressive on paper, but employers are spending more time validating whether a candidate’s experience, accomplishments and technical skills hold up throughout the interview process.”

If conditions are this bad now, what will the employment market look like once things really start falling apart in this country?

We were promised that AI would unleash a new golden age of peace and prosperity for our society.

Obviously that is not what is actually happening.

AI technology will continue to advance at an exponential rate, and soon millions more human workers will become obsolete.

This story is not going to end well, but most of you have already figured that out.

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.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

How much shaking is it going to take before most of the population starts paying attention? The ground underneath our feet just keeps shaking. Nobody can deny this. As you will see below, there has been a long list of large earthquakes that have hit our planet over the past week, and this is something that I have been writing about a lot in recent days. What we are experiencing is not normal, and many believe that all of this shaking is just a preview of what is to come.

On Monday morning, a magnitude 5.5 earthquake suddenly struck approximately 140 miles off the coast of Oregon…

The Pacific’s notorious ‘Ring of Fire’ has delivered another jolt amid a recent burst of seismic activity around the globe’s most earthquake-prone region. The US Geological Survey detected a magnitude 5.5 earthquake roughly 140 miles west of the Oregon coast at around 7:35am ET Monday. The earthquake struck deep beneath the Pacific Ocean and there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. No tsunami warning was issued, although residents in Salem and Rockaway Beach reported feeling the shaking.

The reason why this was such a noteworthy quake is because it occurred along the Cascadia Subduction Zone…

The quake occurred along a tectonically active stretch of the Pacific coastline, part of the broader Cascadia Subduction Zone known for producing both frequent moderate events and the potential for far larger ones.

This is one of the most dangerous fault zones in the entire world.

It sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, and it has the potential to cause seismic events of cataclysmic proportions.

Scientists assure us that it is just a matter of time before a gigantic earthquake occurs along the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and I have repeatedly warned about what this will mean for those living near the coasts of Oregon and Washington once this happens…

Someday, an absolutely gigantic earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone will send a colossal wall of water toward the west coast of the United States. We are talking about a disaster that would be greater than anything we have ever experienced in the entire history of our country so far, and scientists are openly warning us that it is just a matter of time before such a disaster happens. It is being projected that the wall of water could be up to 100 feet tall, and it will cause extreme devastation. Tall buildings will be instantly flattened, vehicles will be picked up and tossed around like toys, and countless numbers of people will instantly go to their watery graves. If you are directly in the path of such a tsunami, there will be no escape.

Do you remember the huge tsunami that hit Japan in 2011?

The tsunami that will eventually hit the west coast will absolutely dwarf that.

This latest earthquake off the coast of Oregon comes just days after a magnitude 5.6 earthquake hit Northern California and a pair of very large earthquakes caused catastrophic damage in Venezuela…

This comes after a 5.6 magnitude earthquake rattled Northern California and major back-to-back earthquakes struck Venezuela last Wednesday.

Days later, heightened seismic activity across the Pacific Ring of Fire brought earthquakes to Japan, the Philippines, and Nicaragua on Friday.

It is almost as if something has just suddenly snapped.

Over the past 7 days, we have witnessed a very long list of large earthquakes all over the world…

That is a stunning list.

And the shaking just won’t stop.

In fact, Venezuela just got hit by some more very big aftershocks…

Strong aftershocks have struck Venezuela’s capital as rescuers continue to search for tens of thousands of civilians who are still missing in the aftermath of two violent earthquakes.

The aftershock was felt shortly after 7.00am (11.00am GMT) in Caracas and La Guaira on Monday, as the search continues for survivors of last Wednesday’s quakes that have already claimed at least 1,450 lives.

It would be difficult to overstate the scale of the tragedy that we are witnessing in Venezuela.

At this stage, nearly 70,000 people have been reported missing…

The death toll from Venezuela’s twin earthquakes has risen to 1,430, with families reporting at least 68,900 people missing. The toll continued to climb even after the 72-hour window for rescuing survivors alive closed Saturday, while anger over the government’s response intensified in some of the hardest-hit areas.

I have a feeling that the vast majority of those that have been reported missing were killed by the earthquakes.

Many of them will never be found.

As our planet continues to become even more unstable, there will be even larger earthquakes.

One of the biggest danger zones is right in the middle of the United States, and very early on Monday a magnitude 3.5 earthquake rattled southern Illinois…

According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), a magnitude 3.5 earthquake registered at 1:05 a.m. in northwest Edwards County, just south of the Richland County line.

This is close to the Illinois-Indiana border.

USGS reports the epicenter was 3.7 miles northeast of West Salem and measured 11.8 miles deep.

I asked Google if West Salem is close to the New Madrid Fault Zone, and this is what I was told…

Yes, West Salem, Illinois, is in a region considered at risk from the New Madrid Seismic Zone and the nearby Wabash Valley Seismic Zone.

I believe that this was another warning.

This earthquake caused so much shaking that it was actually felt in St. Louis and Louisville…

So far, the USGS says hundreds of people have reported feeling shaking across a wide stretch as far west as St. Louis, Missouri, as north as Effingham, Illinois, as south as Evansville, Indiana and as east as Louisville, Kentucky.

The largest earthquakes in the history of the continental United States occurred along the New Madrid Fault Zone.

Now the New Madrid Fault Zone is waking up again.

One of these days, a colossal earthquake will literally rip the country in half from north to south. The scar that will be created in the middle of the nation will be so deep that the Great Lakes will actually flow into the Gulf of Mexico. Since all of the existing bridges will be destroyed, you will actually need to take a boat ride or a flight if you want to travel from the eastern half of the country to the western half of the country.

But most of the population is not alarmed by the shaking that we are currently witnessing at all.

They have been assured that all of this shaking is just temporary and that things will soon return to normal.

Of course the truth is that there will be no return to normal.

Chaos is erupting all over the planet, and I believe that the second half of this year will be even more chaotic than the first half.

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.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

A lot of people out there still don’t realize that we are literally watching World War III play out right in front of our eyes. The war between Russia and Ukraine is already longer than World War I was, and every single ceasefire in the Middle East that has been agreed to since October 7th, 2023 has ultimately collapsed. Just a couple of weeks ago, the world was celebrating because the U.S. had signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” with Iran and we were being told that we were finally going to have permanent peace in the Middle East. So how did that work out? I feel like a broken record when I keep saying that there isn’t going to be peace in the Middle East, but it is the truth.

At the end of last week, the Iranians attacked a commercial vessel that was traveling through the Strait of Hormuz using a route that they did not authorize, and the U.S. responded by bombing several Iranian military targets. This is something that I covered in an article for my core supporters on Friday.

Then on Saturday, the same cycle repeated again.

Iran attacked another commercial vessel that was attempting to slip through the Strait of Hormuz along an “unauthorized” route, and in response the U.S. conducted an even larger wave of strikes…

U.S. Central Command said its forces had carried out the new strikes after a Panama-flagged tanker was attacked by an Iranian drone on Saturday.

“Iran was given a chance to honor the ceasefire agreement but elected not to,” Central Command said in a statement.

U.S. strikes were “in direct response to continued Iranian aggression against commercial shipping” and targeted Iranian military surveillance, communications, air defence, drone storage and mine-laying facilities, it said.

Following that wave of strikes, President Trump warned that there “may come a point” when the U.S. must hit Iran so hard that it “will no longer exist”…

“United States aircraft just struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations, and coastal radar sites, for violating the Cease Fire Agreement, AGAIN!” Mr. Trump said in a Truth Social post.

The president issued an aggressive threat in the post, saying it was possible Iran “may never learn.”

“There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started,” the president said. “If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

That is very strong language.

Needless to say, conventional weapons would not be able to accomplish that goal.

In response to the latest wave of U.S. strikes, the IRGC launched missiles and drones at U.S. facilities in Kuwait and Bahrain…

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement its navy and air forces had launched missile and drone operations targeting U.S. military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain.

The Guards said U.S. strikes had violated the ceasefire and “will result in the complete halt of all diplomatic processes”, state-run Press TV said. The IRGC navy command said American bases in the region “will experience hell in the coming days”.

Most of the missiles and drones were intercepted, but significant damage was done to a residential building in Bahrain.

This is not what a ceasefire is supposed to look like.

I know that there was so much hope that the negotiations which were initiated once the Memorandum of Understanding was signed would finally resolve the central issues that the U.S. and Iran have been fighting about, but those negotiations have now been put on hold…

Talks to end the U.S. war with Iran are on hold after the U.S. struck Iranian military targets in retaliation for Tehran’s latest strikes on shipping vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

A Pakistani source involved in the negotiations to settle the conflict between the U.S. and Iran told MS NOW that while the talks are now on hold, all sides are maintaining representatives in Switzerland to restart discussions when given the go-ahead.

The source did not make clear to MS NOW which side decided to pause negotiations.

Sadly, the reality of the matter is that these negotiations were doomed anyway.

Iran is never going to make the nuclear concessions that the Trump administration is seeking.

And Iran is never going to agree to allow commercial traffic to flow freely through the Strait of Hormuz the way that it did before the war…

The Iranian parliament’s national security committee spokesperson on Sunday said the Strait of Hormuz would not return to its pre-war state and that other countries would have no choice but to comply with Iran’s orders in the waterway.

“We firmly support the action of the ever-victorious Guards in a crushing confrontation with the American enemy and in asserting Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz,” Ebrahim Rezaei wrote on X. “The Strait of Hormuz will not return to its previous state, and others have no choice but to comply with Iran’s orders in the strait.”

The crisis in the Middle East is not going to have a happy ending.

I believe that we will witness some absolutely shocking escalations in the months ahead, and there are some Iranians that are convinced that now is the time to greatly accelerate their nuclear program…

Iran has “no choice” but to develop a nuclear bomb, a media outlet linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said — the latest threat to the peace deal.

The article, titled “No choice but to build the atomic bomb,” claims that Iran must negotiate with its enemies from a position of strength, and was published by Iranian state news outlet Fars on Sunday.

“To achieve the peace and calm that Iran needs, it must absolutely reach nuclear deterrence to ensure that the rest of the issues can be resolved through negotiation,” thunders the piece, before comparing Iran’s situation with the US to that of China in the 1970s.

Of course the Iranians are also furious about the fighting that has been going on in Lebanon.

The latest ceasefire with Hezbollah has already collapsed, and the IDF conducted even more strikes in Lebanon on Sunday…

Israel renewed its strikes on Lebanon on Sunday, Lebanese state media reported, two days after an agreement was signed by the two countries, which a Hezbollah lawmaker warned would lead to “internal conflict”.

The strikes come a day after one person was killed in an Israeli strike on the south, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, with the Israeli military saying it targeted Hezbollah members near its self-proclaimed “security zone”, which reaches 10 kilometres (6 miles) into Lebanon.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported several strikes on Sunday.

There will never be permanent peace between Israel and Hezbollah.

Anyone that believes otherwise is just being delusional.

Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine just continues to intensify.

In recent days, the Ukrainians have been conducting a series of stunning long-range attacks deep inside Russian territory…

Ukraine kept up its heavy drone assault on Russia, setting fire to a major oil refinery in the south and killing at least two people, Russian authorities said Sunday, as President Vladimir Putin acknowledged his country is going through a “difficult period.”

Ukraine has markedly stepped up its long-range attacks on Russian military industries and energy facilities in recent months, aiming to cut Moscow’s revenue for its invasion — now in its fifth year — and make Russians feel the consequences.

Russian leaders are running out of patience, and it would not surprise me at all if they decide to use tactical nukes at some point.

But for now, they continue to absolutely pummel Ukrainian cities with conventional weapons…

President Volodymyr Zelensky stated on Saturday, June 27, that Russian forces deployed approximately 1,400 attack drones, 1,500 guided aerial bombs, and 19 missiles of various types, including ballistic missiles, against Ukraine over the past week.

In a statement published on Telegram, Zelensky noted that 15 Ukrainian regions were subjected to Russian attacks during the seven-day period. He highlighted that the cities of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Sumy faced near-daily bombardment.

No matter how much the politicians have talked about peace, nothing has been able to stop the war in Ukraine.

And no matter how much the politicians have talked about peace, nothing has been able to stop the war in the Middle East.

We really are living at a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, and the truth is that this is just the beginning.

We are going to witness death and destruction on a scale that most people cannot imagine, and the world is simply not prepared for what is coming next.

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.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The Iranians have never wavered from their position that they intend to control traffic through the Strait of Hormuz permanently. They just underscored this point by launching an attack on a cargo vessel near the coast of Oman. During the 60 day negotiation window with the United States, Iran is not charging commercial vessels to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, but they are insisting that coordination with the Iranian military is mandatory. Any travel that does not go through “designated corridors” is strictly prohibited…

The IRGC Navy said that only the shipping routes designated by Iran are permitted for passage, and that coordination with Iranian forces via the designated communication channel is mandatory, according to Iranian local media.

“Navigation outside these routes is highly dangerous and prohibited, and we warn all vessels to strictly avoid any movement outside the designated corridors,” the IRGC Navy said, according to the report.

The warning came after a key naval information group had proposed alternative shipping corridors on Saturday, asking shipowners to consider transiting the strait along the southern route with their transponder signals on. “The southern transit route, along Omani [territorial waters], has been confirmed clear of mines and is the recommended route,” the notice said.

It is true that there are certain areas of the Strait of Hormuz that are highly unsafe because they still have mines in them.

But the routes that have been designated by Iran are not the only safe routes.

Some ships have been getting through the Strait of Hormuz by sailing close to the coast of Oman, and one such vessel was just attacked…

A cargo vessel in the Strait of Hormuz was struck by an “unknown projectile” on Thursday evening near the Oman coast, according to the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations.

The vessel suffered damage to its bridge, but said no one was injured, according to the UKMTO, which receives reports of suspicious activity from all vessels in the Gulf region.

The strike took place at 5:40 p.m. local time (10:10 a.m. ET).

There is no use in pretending.

Everyone knows that it was the Iranians that did this.

They are making it clear that they intend to control all traffic through the Strait of Hormuz from this point forward.

And once the 60 day negotiating window with the United States is over, they intend to impose “hefty fees” on all vessels that pass through the Strait…

Despite Rubio’s warning while meeting with GCC allies in Bahrain, Iran is planning to move forward on charging hefty fees for vessels wishing to transit the Strait of Hormuz under its protocol, which is to be enforced by the IRGC. What’s more is that it’s seeking Beijing’s approval and help.

Iran’s chief negotiator and Parliament Speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, asserted during a prior visit to Oman this week: “Everyone needs to know that management of the strait will never return to the way it was before.”

When the Iranians say “never”, they actually mean never.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Iranians plan to make about 40 billion dollars a year by holding the global economy hostage…

Iran is pushing to make billions of dollars from the Strait of Hormuz as the regime positions itself to manage the global oil artery it severed at the start of the war.

The Islamic Republic estimates that charging for security, safety and environmental services in the strait would bring in $40 billion a year in revenue for states involved, according to officials familiar with the matter. The idea, if implemented, would give Tehran cash flow and control that it didn’t command before the war.

Those that pay up will be able to go through.

Those that do not pay up will not.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is insisting that what the Iranians intend to do cannot ever be allowed…

Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Thursday that allowing Iranian tolls on ships passing the Strait of Hormuz would create a precedent to other waterways, risking “total chaos.”

“International waterways do not belong to any nation state. This is a foundational principle in the world today, without which the world would be in total chaos,” he told a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Bahrain.

“If in fact we accepted that you can charge money to use an international waterway because it happens to be near your territorial space, well then this will spread throughout the world like a contagion.”

He is right.

But it would take war to stop the Iranians from imposing tolls.

And if war erupts again, it would completely close the Strait of Hormuz until the war was finally resolved one way or the other.

Of course it is inevitable that more fighting will erupt between Israel and Iran.

It is just a matter of time.

Meanwhile, global supplies of oil just keep getting tighter and tighter…

Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz cut off around 13 million barrels of oil per day, roughly a fifth of the world’s supply. All told, the global economy will lose 1.6 billion barrels of oil supply between February and August, according to JPMorgan.

The good news is that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has increased this week, but it is still way below pre-war levels…

70 ships transited the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, a 105% increase of traffic day on day, according to maritime business intelligence firm Kpler.

In a social media statement, the firm said ships were increasingly using a southern route through the strait that hugs Oman’s coastline, as opposed to one that brings them close to Iran’s coast in the north of the waterway.

Even if Iran fully reopened the Strait of Hormuz permanently with no restrictions and no tolls, the amount of oil and natural gas coming through the Strait of Hormuz would not return to normal for a very long time because it is going to take years to fully repair and rebuild all of the oil and natural gas infrastructure that was damaged or destroyed during the war.

And that is a major problem, because oil stockpiles all over the planet continue to drop even lower.

In Cushing, Oklahoma, the storage tanks are now “dangerously close to empty”…

The amount of crude oil inventory at the Cushing Hub in Oklahoma fell to a 12-year low in the past week, according to the latest report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and in the opinion of some experts, puts the hub at nearly empty. Dangerously close to empty.

The inventories at the northern Oklahoma storage site, known as the “Pipeline Crossroads of the World,” fell by 6 million barrels. Considered the delivery hub for West Texas Intermediate futures traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange, Cushing’s new total as of this week was just 19 million barrels. Cushing is where dozens of pipelines intersect, carrying oil from the Permian, Bakken, SCOOP/STACK, Rockies and Western Canada.

The new level means the Cushing Hub is dangerously close to “empty” according to some experts. The 19 million barrels reflects about 25% of the 76-million barrel working capacity at the hub. It also results in an operational stress level which is the point where tanks struggle to supply customers with usable oil due to pipeline residue and structural minimums.

Those that are convinced that the global energy crisis is behind us need to explain where we are going to get enough oil and natural gas to keep inventories from continuing to decline throughout the world.

Even in a best case scenario, things are going to be very tough for many months to come.

Of course if a worst case scenario materializes and all-out war between Israel and Iran erupts, we really will have a major energy disaster on our hands.

The global economy cannot operate normally without sufficient quantities of oil and natural gas from the Middle East.

The Strait of Hormuz must be reopened permanently without any restrictions or tolls, but the Iranians are absolutely refusing to compromise.

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.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.