Deep into the first eclipse season of 2026, the US and Israel launched a coordinated attack on Iran. The strike killed dictator Ali Hosseini Khamenei as well as hundreds of civilians, including 165 at a girls’ elementary school in Minab.

The three men at the center of this gruesome violence (arguably three of the most dangerous, depraved, and polarizing political figures of the last half-century) — Khamenei, Donald Trump, and Benjamin Netanyahu — were all born on eclipses. Khamenei was born during the solar eclipse on April 19th, 1939, and he died between two eclipses, in a bombardment from two countries ruled by fellow eclipse natives: Trump, born during the lunar eclipse on June 14th, 1946, and Netanyahu, born during the solar eclipse on October 21st, 1949.

To the ancients, eclipses often portended the downfall of powerful figures, but that isn’t the only astrological factor at play here. We’ve also been contending with a once-in-36-years conjunction between Saturn (the planet of borders and discipline) and Neptune (a planet that dissolves everything in its path), as well as an explosive square between Mars (the planet of war) and Uranus (the planet of disruption). With so many violent events coming to a head on the global stage, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the astrology of this moment is pretty harrowing.

Let’s get into it.

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Eclipses in Aquarius and Virgo: Toppling empires

The first eclipse of the year happened in Aquarius on February 17th, and it was followed by a second eclipse in Virgo on March 3rd. Eclipses are astrological accelerators. They speed things up. And they tend to align with major endings and beginnings (with maximum drama), both in our personal lives and in the collective.

The ancients associated the “baleful rays” of eclipses with the deaths of kings and the collapses of entire empires. This is because the Sun and Moon were considered the symbolic rulers of the cosmos, leading the heavens and the Earth with their life-giving light. And because the light of the Sun and Moon gets temporarily blocked during eclipses, these eerie events were viewed as unsettling breaches of the cosmic order.

In this eclipse season alone, we witnessed the murder of Mexican cartel leader El Mencho in a military operation, which resulted in dramatic scenes of vehicles and stores on fire in Puerto Vallarta; the arrest of former Prince Andrew, due to his ties with Jeffrey Epstein; and, most recently, the assassination of Ali Hosseini Khamenei, who had been running a ruthless regime in Iran for the past 36 years, the entirety of a Saturn–Neptune cycle.

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The Saturn-Neptune conjunction: On the threshold of a new world

Khamenei became the supreme leader of Iran and de facto head of state in 1989, the same year of the last Saturn-Neptune conjunctions (because of these two planets’ retrograde cycles, there were three conjunctions that year). Saturn and Neptune come together only once every 36 years, and the next time they linked up was a week before Khamenei’s death: on February 20th, 2026, at 0° Aries. Because Saturn represents borders and order, its conjunctions with boundaryless Neptune can lead to the disintegration of those structures. 1989 was also the year the Berlin Wall came crashing down, the Soviet Union began its dissolution, and the World Wide Web was created (for better and for worse). Historically, these transits correlate with times when reality as we’ve known it morphs overnight. When worlds end and begin.

Aries is ruled by Mars, which means the planet of war and conflict is presiding over this new Saturn–Neptune cycle. So we need to pay special attention to what Mars has been doing and what fires it’s been fueling.

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Mars square Uranus: A flash point

From January 23rd to March 2nd, 2026, Mars was in Aquarius and squaring off with Uranus, the planet of change and chaos. This volatile configuration reached its peak on February 27th, within hours of the first attack on Iran. Adding to the turbulence, Uranus at 27° Taurus has been squaring the 27° Aquarius Moon in the United States’ inception chart for the past year and change (yes, that’s exactly where transiting Mars was positioned during the recent attacks), as well as Trump’s natal ascendant (29° Leo) and natal Mars (26° Leo), and — wildly — Netanyahu’s natal Mars (also 26° Leo). And as fate would have it, transiting Uranus is almost exactly conjunct the 28° Taurus Moon in the inception chart of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Again, eclipses tend to force whatever’s been lurking in the background out into the open. And the solar eclipse that occurred on February 17th at 28° Aquarius just so happened to be squaring transiting Uranus, exactly conjunct the United States’ Moon, and squaring Iran’s Moon.

That’s a lot of numbers — so let’s just underscore that it’s rare for planets and eclipses to align so precisely with each other, and with the birth or inception charts of major world players. And when they do line up, history-making events happen.

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Though this is one of the most turbulent astrological periods of 2026, astrologers are also bracing for more conflict in late March and April because of a pile-up of planets in Aries — and extra chaos when Mars and Uranus conjoin on July 3rd, meaning the volatility of this moment will reverberate around Independence Day and be embedded in the next solar return (aka birthday) chart of the United States. And on August 12th, there appears to be a very important solar eclipse in Leo that will be very hard on the leaders of the world.

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How to work with this disruptive astrology

The recent Saturn–Neptune conjunction has launched us into a new, 36-year era. As we continue to feel the effects of this intersection between the planet of idealism and the planet of cold, hard truths, we can choose to focus on the cause rather than the symptom. How do we break through the mirage of division to reclaim the power of our collective? How do we refuse to engage with algorithmic despair-harvesting and redirect our energy toward what we can do? How do we resist getting hijacked by the fantasies of malignant narcissists and instead reimagine the world as it could be? And then act like that’s not only possible but inevitable? Eclipses don’t just take down kings. They reveal the rotten throne itself. We don’t need another hero — we need to break up with the delusion that we do. No one is coming to save us. We are all we’ve got, but we are also all we’ve ever needed.