(15 July 2026) It is now 10 pm MST July 15, or, 4 AM GMT, July 16. We have been watching events centered on Iran and its regime, waiting for escalation of what looks to be the Second Signpost.
The Strait of Hormuz is closed again. The Strait was closed solidly for 113 days starting on March 2, allowing the global inventory of oil to drain to near zero.
It has now been 25 more days that the closure ended and we saw a mixture of Strait opened and closed, but now the Strait is closed again.
We are again faced with the possibility of the Second Signpost beginning its full effect in one week.
Trump’s Threats
In this new Canadian Prepper YouTube video, Nathan interviews Matthew Hoh, former Marine and current political analyst.
At time 01:32 it is shown that President Trump threatened again to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges. And he added that Iran has one week to come to the negotiating table. Of course, Iran said a long time ago that if the US did that, Iran would take out the entire Gulf oil infrastructure, which would cause the Second Signpost to take full effect.
At time 02:10, Nathan asks Matthew,
“Where do you see this going? What’s your high level analysis of things? Uh, are you thinking that this is all just bluster and that Trump is going to TACO or do you think that there’s a possibility that indeed we do see the worst of what may come?”
(TACO stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out”)
Hoh answers the question this way at time 02:26, mentioning Iran’s retaliation:
“I think there’s a very real possibility that that we’re going to see this war expand again to the places where we were hoping it wouldn’t reach back in March and April, and that is the destruction of the key energy infrastructure throughout the Persian Gulf.”
Then at time 10:38 to 12:19, Matthew Hoh explains how Iran would definitely make good on its threat of retaliation.
Conclusion
If Trump reverses his statement between now and next week, and therefore TACO’s, the Second Signpost could begin in a couple months or so. A couple months would allow cooler temperatures in the Mideast to allow an invasion on the ground, and would finish grinding down the world inventory of oil including the US SPR.
However, if Trump carries through with his threat next week, then due to Iran’s promise to retaliate, the Second Signpost with its sky high oil price, loss of the petrodollar, and fuel shortages becomes a reality.
Keep watch.
Categories: ALERT, In The News, Signpost #2: Iran, World in the End Times
THE FOUR SIGNPOSTS 
I am surprised you would stoop to using an ad hominem attack like TACO. Paul demonstrated that when we are upset (even righteously so) by our rulers, they are still due our respect and deference in everything that does not affect our obedience to God (Acts 23:3–5, Romans 13:1–7).
Even if we get a high-intensity war with the destruction of the entire Gulf infrastructure soon, Iran can still wait at its leisure until the world economy and the petrodollar have collapsed and the US has brought all of its soldiers home. When both the weather and the world economy are much cooler the invasion will be much easier and suffer fewer losses.
Or we keep having a low-intensity war for months before Iran invades. Months in which the US military infrastructure and the Gulf infrastructure are damaged and destroyed very gradually, and all the oil stocks emptied even further, without really big shocks. In the end, this would be worse for the world economy and the US than the scenario above because without big shocks, emergency measures will be postponed forever and only be effected when they no longer make much difference.
Looking how things develop these past months and years, I think these two scenario’s are more plausible than the entire signpost right now. With the second one the most probable. Just my 2 cents, I am not a prophet.
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Meanwhile the Houthi’s in Jemen are stirring. If they close Strait Bab-el-Mandeb the world economy will suffer even more. Probably Iran has not yet given them the green light for this, because this would hit the Chinese economy severely too.
The Houthi’s are probably in a better geographical position to attack the Saudi oil facilities at Janbu in the Red Sea than Iran itself.
Unrestrained Houthi involvement might draw Europe into the war. Europe does not want to be involved in or near the Gulf, but it already is involved in the Red Sea and Strait Bab-el-Mandeb, against the Houthi’s.
https://www.bnr.nl/nieuws/internationaal/10606362/iraanse-dreiging-bij-bab-el-mandeb-kan-europa-bij-oorlog-betrekken
David,
I “stooped” to using the term “TACO” simply because it has been made common in the political jargon these days. Personally, I don’t think there is any “TACO” – it’s not that Trump chickens out, it’s that he changes his statements back and forth because he habitually keeps enemies and friends back on their heels, projecting unpredictability. Sorry if this offended you. Thanks for the feedback.
Adamant,
Good point. The invasion could come any time after the oil infrastructure is destroyed.
Mark: I, of course, understand that the Iran conflict is a spiritual confict at its core (Daniel 8 & 10). Politically and strategically I view North Korea as more insane than Iran. Iran can knock out and close Hormuz, but North Korea and China can nuke South Korea, Japan, maybe Alaska the West coast and possible and EMP strike. I think of those areas were nuked that would also crush the world economy.
“they are still due our respect and deference in everything that does not affect our obedience to God (Acts 23:3–5, Romans 13:1–7).”
This is not pagan ancient Rome. Modern rulers are without the excuse the ancients had, though not much of one at that, of not having know God or any of His plan. Even less so is that the case in America, whose founding civic virtues were meant to leave the leaders humble public servants, NOT arrogant, backsliding pagan kings. It does not honor modern leaders to compare them to a Caesar. Even Caesar, the idol of power in ancient Rome, was a traitor to the Roman republic. The NT says to give rulers whatever was their customary due in honor or fear. Caesar was NOT a customary Roman position of authority and was rightly abhorred by many of his pagan contemporaries who fought his mad power grab, although ultimately losing. They were still standing for authority as the context of those NT verses defines it, while the Caesars were not. God still used the situation to fulfill His purposes. A whole Senate full of unbelievers would have been harder to convince than one man in an imperial court.
Adamant, it doesn’t sound like either of the two scenarios you outline, the high-intensity one or the low-intensity one, would stop the signpost and would only make a difference insofar as whether the Ram’s first hoofbeats would fall softly on the buildup to the charge, or would thunder all at once from a more-or-less still standing start. You may be right about Iran wanting to wait on taking measures that could damage China’s economy or anger them before Iran’s own perceived self-interest could outweigh their relationship with China.
The Bab-el Mandeb (Hmm -possible connection to Babel? the name’s similarity may not be coincidence) would likely not stay closed for nearly as long as the Strait of Hormuz. The Houthis are much weaker than the IRGC. They aren’t as technically capable of re-armament as the Iranians and don’t have the sheer volume of resources, nor a reliable, semi-protected resupply route like Iran has via the Caspian Sea. Their position is exposed to attack by sea and air from every direction. Their supply of missiles simply could not last near so long as the Iranians’ own could. A Bab-el Mandeb closure would likely not last nearly as long, perhaps a few months at most, and would likely draw together a coalition of navies from all over the world from countries that would never cooperate otherwise. Such a closure, even if just a brief one, still might do as much more damage in its own right, especially if not properly anticipated and prepared for in advance by various nations.
The Tower of Babel in the ancient case represented humanity’s attempt to remain united as one people in defiance of God’s wishes. The modern Bab-el Mandeb and Suez Canal represent the modern physical equivalent of this sinful humanistic defiance. As the center of world commerce, they unite the world as one as much as anything, and in ways completely indifferent to, or hostile to, God’s will. They represent man trying to remake the world and himself in his own image. God doesn’t resent human flourishing by itself, but apart from Him it has no chance of doing good.
K, I did not intend these two scenario’s as stoppers of the signpost, only as arguments that the signpost proper, the ground invasion, may yet tarry for some time.
About the Houthis: one of the youtube links Mark provided recently depicts the Houthi’s as quite formidable. They rule 80% of Yemen already for 12 years, they withstood the Saudi’s for years, and recently also Israel and the US; all three grossly underestimated them just as they underestimated Iran. And they are not dependent on Iran for both missiles and drones, but make their own. And like Iran, they do not surrender in the face of death or defeat but are happy to become martyrs. A coalition of many navies from all over the world might suffer the same fate as the US navy against Iran: gross depletion of ammunition reserves with little to show for it.
Your connection of Bab-el-mandeb with Babel is funny, but the name actually means “Gate of Grief” in Arabic.
Adamant, that 80% figure cited in the video is for population, not territory. Most of Yemen is desert. The Houthis are very much a threat, as I said.
.https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-tells-houthis-close-red-sea-gateway-if-us-hits-power-network-sources-say-2026-07-16/
The Houthis are only ‘formidable’ in that no one has had the guts to go in and take them out. Historically, southern Yemen has often been a center of resistance to anyone trying to rule Arabia. The Houthis will not welcome the IRGC when its fighters show up on their doorstep as part of the wider Second Signpost invasion. They would far rather be independent than be ruled from Tehran. The people of northern/western Yemen didn’t like Gulf States’ interference in their politics or internal affairs any more than the Ukrainians like Russia doing that to them. Their president got overthrown and then the Gulf States tried to impose their own puppet whom the Yemeni people reject in large part because he was a puppet selected by a foreign-controlled political process, or at least that’s the popular perception.
The Houthis are dependent on Iran for the components that let them make anything more sophisticated than a Katyusha. Any factories they have were built with Iranian assistance and remain dependent on Iran for support to keep running. Without Iranian support the Houthis couldn’t keep any of those factories running.
Look at a map. The Persian Gulf is so named because it fits naturally in Iran’s, or Persia’s, pocket.
The Red Sea, on the other hand, is the world’s artery.
Failure in the Perisan Gulf is embarrassing, and a lot of other countries outside the Gulf region were quietly hoping to see the US, and Trump, knocked down a few pegs, even if it means they get inconvenienced for awhile with higher fuel prices. Like everyone, they are underestimating the danger which the global fuel crisis will create and indeed already has begun to cause. Failure in the Red Sea would hurt everyone in ways clear enough that they would not be able to mistake for being ‘worth it’ just to hurt Trump, not optional and would not be tolerated. If that looked like it was even a possibility, other countries would level Yemen if it looked like a choice between Yemen’s survival and their own. Saudi Arabia’s military has expensive equipment but isn’t very effective. They are painfully aware of that and are trying to adapt with, among other measures, lessons drawn from Ukraine. Because of their land being poor, inhospitable desert that nobody else wanted until the discovery of oil, plus having the central location of the Islamic faith kind of forcing a truce at times in the area between the Muslim powers because of the Hajj, then Ottoman, British, and finally until now American protection but also hegemony since the center of political power in the Muslim realms shifted away from the peninsula, the people hadn’t really faced the kind of existential crisis they’re faced with by Iran that would force them to form an effective, modern military.
Saudi Arabia really, really hopes Iraq would be able to stop any Iranian land invasion because they know that they themselves couldn’t do that. Horses, camels, and hiding in the desert worked well enough until the last couple of centuries for the fighting they did have to do. They worked better than wagons or even trains. Other innovations before the internal combustion engine simply weren’t transformative enough to change the nature of desert warfare. Yemen combines the difficulties of desert and mountain warfare, plus urban warfare for anyone trying to root out the Houthis since the population centers are already concentrated in the northwest and interconnected by roads and ports. Those roads and ports had been left open until now because of humanitarian concern for Yemeni civilians. In the event the Houthis became a consistent credible threat to world shipping that humanitarian concern for Yemeni civilians would quickly become vastly outweighed by humanitarian concern for the rest of the world’s population. Yemeni roads and ports would disappear, replaced by craters. Trump has been threatening to do that to Iran and some reports have been saying he has already started. That would give Iran propaganda fodder for its campaign to discredit the West.
Yemen, on the other hand, is an exposed position. It’s the corner of a peninsula. That is strategically a poor location for someone trying to hold to resupply, especially when the surrounding areas are hostile. The Houthis have already made for themselves many enemies, more than any group that size has any business earning for itself. The Gulf States are rich for their size, but still small. Their campaign against the Houthis has used naval power but mostly relied on airstrikes. They never had all that much of either. The truth is, a large part of the reason the Iranian invasions are going to get as far as they will is the relatively weak opposition they will face. At least one of the videos Mark provided a link to mentions, accurately, the relative fragility of the modern Middle Eastern states and how that was done by design after the Western countries drew maps and boundaries to their liking. It wasn’t hard. Those places already did not have large reserves of forest, coal, good farmland, and other resources necessary for a well-rounded modern economy and are heavily import-dependent. They don’t have what it takes to defend themselves, much less project power beyond their borders effectively, because they were designed not to be able to do so. They are financially rich but limited by nature and geography in how they can diversify. Westerners didn’t want them to be able to unite and do what they historically have, which was to expand until they did reach those resources.
Previous efforts against the Houthis failed because they were facing exhaustible opponents. That’s not going to be what they’re faced with if they follow the IRGC’s suicidal lead. You’re right that the Houthis, with their partially Hezbollah ideology, would fight to the death but it would very much be to their own death. Many of the countries who have until now criticized Israel for invading Lebanon repeatedly to fight Hezbollah would get a taste of their own folly when they find themselves having to fight that same ideology. The Houthis think the rest of the world are snowflakes, but it’s the Houthis who would melt under the heat they’d bring down on their heads. They’d be making enemies out of people perfectly willing to die trying to root them out, but even more willing to make sure they did the job right.
You say that “Gate of Grief” is what it “actually means.” Remember that modern Arabic was not a language when the Tower of Babel was built. That’s the point. Modern confusion of human tongues when compared to then is what’s almost funny about the situation, if anything is.
That’s interesting about the Arabic meaning and actually relates to something else I commented on another of Mark’s post about how Qeshm Island is called “Queixome island” in Portuguese, which is “Island of Grief” or “Island of Wailing.” That’s what these two sea gates have become as part of the Second, and soon the Third, Signposts.