Thirteen the Beast is rising
The Frenchman did surmise
Through earthquakes and starvation
The Warlord will ariseTerror, death, destruction
Pour from the Eastern sands
But the truth of all predictions
Is always in your hands—Iron Maiden, "Die With Your Boots On"
The Frenchman, of course, was Michel de Nostredame, a.k.a. Nostradamus — arguably the most famous prophet of the last 500 years. His book of prophecies, first published in 1555, contains hundreds of quatrains. Nostradamus fanboys claim that each quatrain predicts future events — including deadly disasters yet to come.
But alas, Nostradamus’ predictions were listed in nonchronological order, replete with anagrams, poetic flourishes, and astrological references. As a result, nobody is entirely sure what he meant.
Which was key to his long-term success: By keeping his predictions vague and unclear, Nostradamus ensured his own literary immortality — because, no matter what happens anywhere in the world, there’s a quatrain somewhere that “predicted” it.
Including the Iran War.
The Mirror: Nostradamus ‘Predicted Iran War’ and What Comes Next Is Terrifying
The 16th-century mystic Nostradamus predicted the Iran war and hinted at something even more terrifying could happen next, it's been claimed.
YouTuber Donovan Dread shared the theory in a video analysing the writings of the French astrologer and physician, whose book Les Prophéties contains hundreds of cryptic four-line poems known as quatrains.
[…]
It reads: “The great Saturn tiger of Hercania, gift presented to those of the ocean. A fleet chief will set out from Carmania. One who will take land at the Tyran Fosia.”
Dread explains that Hyrcania — or “Hercania” in some spellings — was an ancient region near the Caspian Sea in northern Iran.
Carmania, meanwhile, referred to an area along Iran’s southern coast.
Wow! What an amazing prediction!
What, you STILL doubt Nostradamus’ gift of prophecy? Then explain this:
Predicting Ayatollah’s death
Another verse highlighted in the video refers to the capture of a Persian ruler.
[…]
[Dread] notes that Iran was historically known as Persia until the 20th century and suggests the passage could be interpreted as referring to the death of a powerful leader. Of course, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening days of the war.
Just one tiny problem: The actual verse in question said, “In 1727, in October, the king of Persia shall be captured by those of Egypt.”
And [checks calendar], March-April 2026 sure ain’t October 1727 — nor was Egypt ever involved in Operation Epic Fury.
But Dread insists that it shouldn’t matter:
Dread argues that while the date does not match modern events, some Nostradamus scholars believe the prophet’s timelines may have been symbolic or coded.
“What matters more than the date is the content,” he says in the video. “The king of Persia shall be captured.”
It’s a neat party trick: When the prophecy goes awry, blame symbolism or codes; when it’s even vaguely/plausibly accurate, give Nostradamus full credit.
That’s why I’m a Nostradamus skeptic — and a much bigger fan of the American futurist, Ray Kurzweil, whom I’ve written about before:
In his book, “The Age of Intelligent Machines” (1990), he forecast the dissolution of the Soviet Union via the pressures of new tech, namely cell phones and wireless communication. He also predicted that computers would top the best human chess players “by the year 2000.” And, of course, in May of 1997, Deep Blue by IBM utterly humiliated Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov.
That was the very last time the top chess player on earth was a human.
Kurzweil’s predictions were reevaluated in 2010: Of the 147 predictions he made in “The Age of Intelligent Machines,” “The Age of Spiritual Machines,” and “The Singularity Is Near,” 115 were deemed “entirely correct”; 12 were “essentially correct”; 17 were “partially correct”; and three were “wrong.” That’s a hit-rate of 86%.
Best of all, Kurzweil’s predictions were recorded unambiguously, in plain English. There’s none of that “nonchronological quatrains” or “coded language” nonsense. Instead, Kurzweil laid his cards on the table for everyone to see.
Because his “predictions” weren’t derived from astrology, Tarot cards, tea leaves, or divine beings. They’re assumptions based on the current rate of technological progress, combined with human nature, statistical probabilities, and economic incentives.
His 86% success rate speaks for itself.
Kurzweil’s technique is the smartest, most accurate way to predict the future: If you understand what incentivizes human behavior — and realize that people tend to act in their own (perceived) self-interest — everything else falls into place. It makes the “prophecy game” a piece of cake.
So let’s try it ourselves.
Without any further ado, I hereby present five fearless predictions about what will happen next in the Iran War:
One: The next Nobel Peace Prize go to Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, for brokering the U.S.-Iranian ceasefire.
Naturally: The Nobel Committee HATES President Donald Trump. Even if he cured cancer, AIDS, SIDS, and male pattern baldness, there’s no way in hell the Nobel Committee will give Trump its seal of approval.
He could stop another eight wars, and it still wouldn’t matter.
So, if you’re a feckless, bitter, anti-American organization and wanted everyone to know how much you hated President Trump, how would you do it? What would be the simplest, most elegant way to call him a crazy, boorish warmonger without calling him a crazy, boorish warmonger?
It’d be to give Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif the Nobel Peace Prize that Trump covets — and credit Pakistan for ending a war that Trump began.
Two: This ceasefire will be broken repeatedly. Get used to it.
Famously, World War I ended on the 11th day of the 11th month at 11:00 a.m. in 1918.
Only it really didn’t: Even after the armistice, the fighting continued.
Ceasefires are seldom neat and tidy. Either deliberately or accidentally, they’re almost always violated by at least one side.
The Iran War will follow this pattern.
Iran’s #1 objective — by far — is to maintain control of its country. Part of the reason why its military performed so poorly is that it wasn’t really designed to battle America or Israel directly, but to keep its boot atop the Iranian people.
Iran projects external power with terrorist proxies, drones, ballistic missiles, and a turnkey nuclear program. But it maintains internal control with an army of Islamic thugs ready to slaughter uppity civilians.
The mullahs are far more worried about an internal uprising than a foreign invasion.
This incentivizes Iran to bend the rules of the ceasefire, because doing so proves to the Iranians that the mullahs — and not the Americans — are still in control. And the easiest way for ‘em to do so is to brazenly defy the ceasefire.
But it’ll be a balancing act: Iran can’t violate the ceasefire so egregiously that America and Israel start bombing again. Instead, it’ll push against the limits, violate the agreement as much as possible, and make PR hay out of whatever it gets away with.
Iran is a bad-faith actor. Signing a ceasefire didn’t make it a good-faith actor.
Three: The “fee” on ships in the Strait of Hormuz is real and here to stay — because President Trump believes that it’ll benefit America.
Does Iran have the power to arbitrarily assign a seven-figure “fee” on ships that pass through the Strait of Hormuz? Over the short-term, yes; over the long-term, no. It’s a violation of international law.
Unless the United States allows it.
This morning, I asked President Trump if he’s okay with the Iranians charging a toll for all ships that go through the Strait of Hormuz, he told me there may be a Joint US-Iran venture to charge tolls:
— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) April 8, 2026
“We’re thinking of doing it as a joint venture. It’s a way of securing it —…
It’s an idea I floated on March 19:
Of course, it would be legally helpful if Iran signed a treaty that gave the U.S. full authority to tax, patrol, and secure the strait for the next few decades. That way, everything we’re doing is 100% legitimate. Europe and Asia would have no legal basis to complain.
Besides, most of these ships are trafficking oil — which is deeply damaging to poor Mother Earth (and/or Greta Thunberg’s mental health). So instead of calling it a security fee, let’s make the enviro-nerds happy and call it a carbon tax:
I’d present Europe and Asia with a brand-new eco-friendly carbon tax that’s applied to all ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, schlepping that ruinous carbon all over the world. (Trump could tell ‘em he was inspired by the finest European mind of our generation, Greta Thunberg.) After all, I’m sure all the nations that so enthusiastically signed the Paris Agreement wouldn’t have a problem with it. If anything, they’ll applaud President Trump for caring so much about our fragile planet.
We could call it the Carbon Offset While Accessing Ruinous Diesel tax — a.k.a. the C.O.W.A.R.D. tax.
That’d be nice: Make Europe cut checks to America for being a C.O.W.A.R.D.
Only a tiny smidgen of that oil reaches America anyway. Which means, it would be a de facto tax on China, Asia, and Europe — with the U.S. splitting billions of dollars in revenue with Iran.
It’ll increase the operational cost on everyone else, making American goods cheaper by comparison, benefiting American companies.
Does it violate international law? Absolutely. Is international law enforceable? Probably not.
To keep our Gulf allies happy, we’ll need waivers (or profit-sharing) for Middle East nations that were hit with Iranian missiles. That’ll give ‘em the funds to rebuild, too.
Europe and China can complain all they want, but they lack the means to do anything about it. (England doesn’t even have a functioning navy anymore.)
If they need the oil badly enough, they’ll pay whatever it takes.
Four: The NATO alliance has been fatally wounded and is unlikely to survive.
It might limp on for several more years as a zombie org, but there are too many cracks in its foundation — because it’s now painfully obvious that U.S. and European interests no longer align.
For 100 years, we’ve protected Europe with American blood and treasure. We fought two World Wars on the continent, rebuilt it with the Marshall Plan, and then provided an 80-year security blanket to protect Western Europe from the Soviet Union.
Today, the Cold War is over. The Soviet Union is long gone. And freeriding NATO “allies” like Spain haven’t spent a measly 2% on their national security in over 30 years.
Yet NATO nations still want Ukraine to join — so that American servicemen will be obligated to battle the Russians for them. European elites dream of a future where NATO continues to expand until the Russian Bear is completely caged in.
That’s good for Europe, bad for America.
Europe is wealthy enough to defend itself. Besides, NATO didn’t exactly bend over backward to help us against Iran.
The opposite is true: NATO nations went out of their way to endanger U.S. lives by denying us access to shared military bases and/or their airspace.
That was their decision. And decisions have consequences.
Chief among them: Americans no longer believe that NATO makes us safer, freer, or more prosperous.
Never Trumper David Frum wrote a blistering op-ed on April 8 for The Atlantic, where he confused Richard Nixon’s madman theory with Dwight Eisenhower’s brinkmanship diplomacy. (A distinction we discussed yesterday.) But one paragraph put a smile on my face:
Foreign leaders are surely willing to believe that Trump is “crazy” in the sense that he is detached from reality. They have seen him miscalculate risk and bungle all kinds of projects, such as his trade wars with China and his attempted coup on January 6, 2021. But they also know that when push really comes to shove, Trump will flinch. TACO has become, like NATO, an acronym so familiar that it no longer needs spelling out. [emphasis added]
No longer needs spelling out?
Yeah, tell that to The New York Times:
❌ NYT mixes up NATO and gets its own headline wrong
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) April 4, 2026
The New York Times published a piece referring to NATO as the “North American Treaty Organization.”
That’s simply incorrect — NATO stands for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The mistake made it into print, forcing… pic.twitter.com/KhvHKJCwcG
The truth is, NATO hasn’t been relevant in over a generation. Even The Times forgot what it stood for!
To quote Dandy Don Meredith, “Turn out the lights… the party’s over.”
Five: Operation Epic Fury also marks the end of the Israeli-U.S. military alliance.
Too much antisemitism. Too much anti-Zionism in the national ether. This means that there are too many political headwinds for the U.S.-Israeli alliance to survive: It’s no longer politically viable.
And that was before the Iran War!
The Democratic Party was already stridently anti-Israel, blasting it as a genocidal, apartheid state. After Israel participated in President Trump’s “illegal war” against Iran, the Dems' hatred has reached a crescendo.
Even after Trump leaves office, the Dems will remain an anti-Israel party. It’s who they are now; it’s in their DNA.
Waving a Palestinian flag at a Democratic rally is 100% acceptable; waving an Israeli flag will get you punched in the face.
The Republican Party remains a pro-Israel party, but the clock is ticking: 58% of Republicans have a positive view of Israel.
But 57% of Republicans aged 18 to 49 now have an unfavorable view, and the future belongs to them.
More likely than not, instead of Israel receiving credit for fighting side-by-side U.S. servicemen (and demonstrating considerably more courage than any of our NATO “allies”), Israel will be blamed for dragging us into war.
In all of American history, we’ve never treated a wartime ally this poorly.
It’s not fair, but the world doesn’t run on fairness. It runs on cause-and-effect, and the unfortunate truth is, virtually every PR trendline is heading in an anti-Israel direction. This means that Israel better prepare for a post-U.S. reality, because its future won’t be tied to ours anymore.
The Republican Party isn’t an anti-Israel party yet. But if these trendlines continue, it’s inevitable.
Or is it?
We opened this essay with poetry from Dickinson (Bruce, not Emily). Recall the last line:
“The truth of all predictions is always in your hands.”
No prediction is guaranteed. Nothing is set in stone. It’s still entirely up to us.
So if this offends you, rise up and do something about it.
One Last Thing: 2026 is a critical year for America First. It began with Mayor Mamdani declaring war on “rugged individualism” and will reach a crescendo with the midterm elections. Nothing less than the fate of the America First movement teeters in the balance.
Never before have the political battle lines been so clearly defined. Win or lose, 2026 will transform our country.
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