A Prophecy of Esau and Jacob

UNZ by Ron Unz • March 10, 2026

Seventy years ago both Britain and France were still regarded as great military powers. Having emerged in the winner’s circle of World War II, they had been given permanent seats and veto power on the Security Council of the fledgling United Nations, taking their places alongside America, the USSR, and China.

Just a decade earlier, their empires had encompassed most of the Middle East, and as a consequence they still regarded themselves as the natural overlords of that region. Hence they were outraged by the actions taken by some of the leaders of the newly independent Arab states, notably President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, who nationalized the Suez Canal in July 1956.

Europeans had controlled that vital waterway almost from the time of its original construction, and it was regarded by Britain as a crucial strategic asset.

So having formed a secret alliance with the young State of Israel, Britain and France suddenly struck later that year, using the excuse of a pre-arranged Israeli attack on Egypt to launch their own invasion and occupation of that country. Their military forces easily defeated their weak Egyptian opponents and seized control of the canal and its vicinity. They intended to topple Nasser’s government and thereby reassert their traditional dominance over the entire region and all its new Arab states.

But although the alliance of Britain, France, and Israel easily achieved a total operational military victory, battlefield successes sometimes do not determine the outcome of wars. The United States under President Dwight Eisenhower was opposed to this unprovoked military aggression against the most important Arab country and the seizure of its greatest national asset. So he deployed America’s overwhelming financial power against those invading European countries, and their economies quickly faced total collapse.

For more than a century, the British Pound Sterling had ranked as the world’s most important currency but that was no longer the case. Although Prime Minister Anthony Eden might have foolishly believed that it still retained some of that standing in the postwar era, he quickly discovered he was mistaken. His government’s finances were wrecked and his country’s economy risked the same fate, so without a single American shot being fired, he was forced to politically surrender together with his French and Israeli allies. All their military units withdrew in total national humiliation.

Britain’s 1956 financial defeat has traditionally been called its “Suez Moment” revealing to the entire world that Britain no longer existed as a great and independent power. Britain would never again attempt any such bold international action, so the sun had finally set on the last faded residue of the once mighty British Empire.

I think there is a very real possibility that President Donald Trump’s sudden attack against Iran might result in a similar development for our own country.

Without even firing a single shot, China could easily inflict a severe financial and economic defeat upon America. The resulting collapse would probably force our effective political surrender on several different fronts, resulting in a national humiliation every bit as great as that suffered by Britain and its allies seven decades ago.

During the last few weeks President Trump had positioned an enormous American military force near Iran, a force that by some accounts contained as much as half of our available air and naval power.

This deployment greatly exceeded anything we had sent to the region since our 2003 invasion of Iraq. It seemed far too large to merely be aimed at pressuring that country into major concessions. So most observers agreed that a huge American attack on Iran was very likely.

Despite all these indications, I hoped that this war might be averted as our negotiations with Iran in Oman moved forward. Trump repeatedly declared that our central demand was that the Iranians promise that they would not develop a nuclear weapon, and the Iranians did exactly that, offering to allow international inspections to guarantee that result, just as they had done numerous times in the past. Indeed, for twenty years all our many different intelligence agencies had agreed that Iran had abandoned all its nuclear weapons development work in 2003.

Iran was a large country comparable in size to all of Western Europe and had a population of over 90 million so an American war would be an enormous undertaking.

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But Iran threatens to wipe out Israel and the United States.

“Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.” Psalm 83:4

For an indepth Study, see A Psalm 83 Prophecy

~ by Joel on March 12, 2026.

Posted in Iran, US