Good morning!

Is America about to strike Iran? This morning on Truth Social, President Trump announced “a massive armada” heading that way. “It is moving quickly, with great power, enthusiasm and purpose,” and it is “ready, willing and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary.”

The threat is meant to convince Iran to negotiate an end to its quest for nuclear weapons. “Time is running out; it is truly of the essence!” he wrote. “As I told Iran once before, make a deal!” He was referring to the lead-up to America’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities last June, and warned, “The next attack will be far worse! Don’t make that happen again.”

President Trump prides himself on his unpredictability. With Iran, he certainly has been unpredictable.

Last month, when protests filled Iran’s streets, Trump cheered. On January 13 he posted, “Iranian patriots, keep protesting—take over your institutions!!!” He also said, “Help is on the way” and threatened to attack if Iran’s leaders executed any protesters. Reports suggest they committed some 36,500 extrajudicial executions in just two days, January 8 and 9. Yet Trump backed down. On January 16, he explained to reporters that the mullahs told him there would be no more executions. “They were going to hang over 800 people yesterday,” he said, “and I greatly respect the fact that they canceled that.”

The protesters felt betrayed. “Iranians feel that they were played, that he fooled them, deceived them,” one Iranian told Time. “Trump is worse than Obama,” another said. “He screwed up. He pulled the rug from under our feet.”

Unpredictability has its limits. If President Trump retreated because he needed time to secure vulnerable U.S. targets and marshal forces for a proper attack, his premature tough talk truly undermined his credibility. If help is now on the way, it comes too late for the tens of thousands of Iranians already killed and after the regime has severely weakened the opposition.

And as unpredictable as the president is, certain predictable patterns give us a sense of how this situation will likely unfold.

Trump’s ultimate aim is always the deal. This assumes good faith on the other side—even from a murderous, Islamofascist terror state. “They want to make a deal,” Trump told Axios about Iran on Monday. “I know so. They called on numerous occasions. They want to talk.” The military’s main purpose—even when force is used—is to jump-start negotiation.

This is why the Trumpet remains confident that whatever happens, somehow Iran will remain radical enough and powerful enough to fulfill its prophesied role as the “king of the south.” As we wrote after this past summer’s strikes, “In the end, the way America handles Iran will be a powerful lesson in the danger of failing to deal completely with evil.”

Scenes of a Divided America

Single ladies: Get online, find an ice agent, invite him to dinner, and poison him. That’s the advice from one nurse at Virginia Commonwealth University Health. Not enough to kill him, she adds charitably, but enough to incapacitate him and get him off the street.

Yes, this is just one example from just one dangerous, crazy person, and she is now fired. But many other examples are revealing just how horribly divided Americans are.

• Elliot Forhan is running for attorney general of Ohio, and although he is unlikely to win, he has gained prominence, partially for promising to put Donald Trump on trial and get him executed.
• Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner promised to “hunt down” ice agents, for decades if necessary.
• A Chicago school district placed a teacher on leave for writing “Go ice” on Facebook.
• At a town hall meeting, a protester shouted at Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and sprayed something from a syringe at her.
• Democratic senators are saying they won’t vote for a Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill this week, threatening a partial government shutdown.

One year ago at his inauguration, Donald Trump said, “A tide of change is sweeping the country, sunlight is pouring over the entire world, and America has the chance to seize this opportunity like never before.” He declared that “the entire nation is rapidly unifying behind our agenda with dramatic increases in support from virtually every element of our society. … National unity is now returning to America, and confidence and pride is soaring like never before.”

Now protests are erupting against Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, protesters are carrying loaded guns, illegal immigrants remain, and demonstrators in Minneapolis are tailing federal agents, suggesting harming them, and setting up their own unofficial borders by unlawfully stopping vehicles and checking motorists’ IDs (while decrying lawful stopping of vehicles and checking IDs to apprehend criminals). Where is the rapid unification behind the Trump agenda?

In his book America Under Attack, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry writes:

Right now, there is a great focus on whether Donald Trump will return to office. Prophecy shows that he will. The bigger issue is what will happen after Trump regains power. He will stop the blotting out of the name of Israel. But this nation is very far from God! And Jeroboam and everyone else need a powerful warning and a call to repentance.

National division is still here—and growing worse—because Americans’ sins against God are still here and growing worse. Only national repentance can bring unity, but Americans and their leaders still don’t understand that they need to repent, nor what they need to repent of.

Largest NATO Exercise of 2026 Held Without U.S.

nato’s biggest military exercise this year, “Steadfast Dart 26,” has been underway since January 15. Participating in it are over 10,000 soldiers, 1,500 tanks, 17 ships and 20 military aircraft from 11 nations all under the command of German Gen. Ingo Gerhartz. Yet the number of personnel from nato’s most powerful member, the U.S., is zero.

This is a major step toward Germany assuming more leadership over Europe, independent of America.

nato was formed by the U.S. with the purpose of “keeping the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down,” according to its first secretary general, Lord Ismay. But in this exercise, the U.S. is out, and Germany is up.

“‘Steadfast Dart’ shows how important Germany is as a hub for nato’s defense,” Gerhartz said, adding: “Our nato command in Central Europe is not only conducting this exercise but is also responsible for defending the alliance’s territory from the Atlantic coast to the Baltics.”

This German-led nato exercise empowers Europe at precisely the time of its conflict with the U.S. over Greenland and as the trend surges to stop relying on U.S. power and start building a European military. German-led Europe is starting to view the U.S. not as an integral ally but as a threat.

Based on Bible prophecies, the Trumpet and its predecessor, the Plain Truth under Herbert W. Armstrong, have warned for decades that Germany will form an empire of 10 nations or groups of nations that will not only divorce from its alliance with the United States but will attack and subjugate it.

IN OTHER NEWS

Maliki comeback in Iraq? Over the weekend, Iraq’s legislature nominated former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to get his old job back. Shiite-interest parties with ties to Iran form the largest bloc in the legislature, and Maliki is considered to be closer to Iran than the current prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani. United States President Donald Trump threatened to “no longer help” Iraq if Maliki returns to power, but Iraq’s current politics demonstrate what the Trumpet has warned about for years: Iraq has fallen to Iran.

Purge of top Chinese general may accelerate war on Taiwan: The Chinese Defense Ministry announced on January 24 that Gen. Zhang Youxia, second-in-command of the People’s Liberation Army and lifelong personal friend of General Secretary Xi Jinping, was under investigation for “serious violations of discipline and law.” Chief of Joint Staff Gen. Liu Zhenli is also facing criminal charges. The ruling Chinese Communist Party’s official statement asserts that the two “gravely fostered political and corruption problems that weakened the party’s absolute leadership over the military” and “caused immense harm” to China’s combat readiness. But some analysts believe Zhang was removed because he resisted Xi’s plans for an imminent attack on Taiwan. “Zhang has disagreed with Xi on acting on Taiwan,” said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center. “He is much more conservative from the military point of view. With the purge of him and his people, there is much less resistance in the system.” Whether or not these purges factor in, the Trumpet maintains that the Chinese Communist Party will soon seize Taiwan.

Starmer goes to China: Today, Keir Starmer became the first British prime minister to visit Communist China since the onset of the covid-19 pandemic. Alongside 50 business leaders from the United Kingdom, Starmer is encouraging British companies to seize opportunities in China as trade relations with the U.S. become more volatile. He told reporters, “It doesn’t make sense to stick our head in the ground and bury it in the sand when it comes to China: It’s in our interests to engage.” This visit could change Britain’s relationship with China after years of division due to the Chinese Communist Party oppressing Hong Kong, supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and credible allegations of regularly spying on British political and business leaders.

Dollar at four-year low and still dropping: Over the past two weeks, the dollar’s exchange rate against a basket of major currencies dropped to its lowest value in four years. “What is particularly striking is the momentum with which the U.S. currency has depreciated across the board,” Germany’s Handelsblatt wrote. The dollar was already at a four-year low due to distrust in the U.S. as a reliable trading partner and a lack of demand for U.S. bonds. President Trump responded that he was not concerned about it, which caused the dollar’s value to drop further. (He has long argued that a weaker dollar has certain advantages in manufacturing, energy and many exports). The Trumpet warns that Bible prophecy reveals a financial crisis will help isolate the U.S. economy from the rest of the world.

Midwives in Devon have no way of recording a baby’s sex on a new form provided by the local National Health Service trust. Instead, they are ludicrously expected to discern the “gender identity,” “preferred pronouns” and “sexual orientation” of babies born just minutes prior. The situation combines wokeness with incompetence, since the form comes from the nhs trust adopting new software and applying the woke default questions for a new patient to a newborn baby. “This is the backbone of documentation that will follow babies for life,” explained one local midwife. “It’s proof the baby exists and is needed to get a birth certificate.” Midwives first flagged the issue two years ago, and it’s still not fixed. Fiona McAnena, director of the campaign group Sex Matters, said, “It seems managers there are so in thrall to gender identity ideology that they are willing to risk medical clarity rather than ditch the pronouns.”