How three pizza restaurants predicted Israel's attack on Iran

You can understand why the stress of an all-nighter at the coalface in the Pentagon might lead to an urgent need for carbs, but the next time the world is on the brink of a major conflict, the US Department of Defense might consider sending out for burgers. Their pizza deliveries have become the subject of intense speculation.
An account on X, Pentagon Pizza Report, has taken to monitoring the traffic at pizza takeaway spots in Arlington County, Virginia, home of America's military headquarters.
And such is the apparent reliability of the so-called 'pizza index', it is now being cited by Open-Source Intelligence sleuths who usually rely on live flight-tracking data, and satellite imagery of troop movements, to spot the early signs of military strikes.
On Thursday night, at around 7pm Eastern Standard Time, any establishment slinging dough within three miles of the Pentagon saw a sudden spike in footfall. 'As of 6:59pm ET nearly all pizza establishments nearby the Pentagon have experienced a HUGE surge in activity.'
Only about 10 minutes later, there was a significant drop in footfall in each of these locations. It was as if a gap between meetings had prompted a flurry of takeaway and delivery orders which then tailed off again as work resumed.
At 23:55 (by which time most restaurants had closed) one takeaway which stays open until midnight suddenly showed 'busier than usual' activity. 'With minutes left before close District Pizza Palace which is not too far from the Pentagon is experiencing a huge surge in traffic.' Last-minute orders before staff would be forced to resort to whatever was left in the vending machines, perhaps? It's understandable – no one wants a Bounty in a crisis.
Five miles away, the Domino's locations near The White House were also experiencing 'above average levels of traffic'. Meanwhile, it was crickets at the local post-work watering holes. Come 10pm and Freddie's Beach Bar, 'the closest gay bar to the Pentagon' had 'abnormally low traffic for a Thursday night. Potentially indicating a busy night at the Pentagon.'
And a busy night it was. An hour and a half after the 7pm spike at the pizza restaurants near the Pentagon, explosions were heard in Tehran and Israel's defence minister Israel Katz said the country had launched a 'preemptive strike against Iran.' Asked what 'heads-up' the United States received about the attack, Trump later told the Wall Street Journal: 'Heads-up? It wasn't a heads-up. It was, we know what's going on.'
Puerile, perhaps, to use Google's restaurant footfall data to track the ebb and flow of tension in the Pentagon, which houses 24,000 military and civilian employees, and the White House Situation Room, as Israel launched air strikes on Iran. But over the years, pizza delivery patterns in central D.C. have, bizarrely, proven to be an indicator of major geopolitical events. So much so that in an interview in 2010, Wolf Blitzer, who was CNN's military affairs reporter before becoming White House correspondent in 1992, said: 'I always knew there was some sort of crisis going on in the West Wing after hours when I saw the arrival of pizzas. Bottom line for journalists: always monitor the pizzas.'
On August 1 1990, pizza orders are said to have spiked as Saddam Hussein prepared to invade Kuwait the following day. When Operation Desert Storm was launched in 1991, Frank Meeks, who owned 59 Domino's franchises in the Washington area, told news outlets his orders soared every time military action was imminent. In 1998, he told the LA Times, there was a similarly busy night during Clinton's impeachment hearings. Meeks claimed that there were telltale signs when a crisis was afoot: the top brass and military analysts took comfort in extra cheese and meat toppings.
In December 1998, with Operation Desert Fox (a major bombing campaign against Iraq) underway, 'the White House ordered 32 per cent more extra-cheese pizzas than normal', the Washington Post reported.
Meanwhile, some say the pizza theory dates back to the Cold War, when Soviet intelligence services were said to have monitored deliveries, deeming a spike to be a sign the US was on manoeuvres.
It sounds far-fetched, although those paying close attention to the recent rising tensions between Israel and Iran may have learned more from monitoring @PenPizzaReport than the X account of US defence journalists. On April 13 2024, there was a spike in traffic at the capital's pizza restaurants shortly after Iran launched drones into Israeli territory. Google says its live charts showing how busy individual restaurants and takeaways are is based on 'aggregated and anonymised data' from the devices of those who share their location history with the search giant. That, in theory, could include both customers picking up their own takeaway orders, and drivers working for food delivery firms.
The charts themselves offer little detail about the surge in footfall. Did the military top brass send Pentagon interns out to fetch their pizzas on Thursday night? Or did Uber Eats have a particularly busy evening? The Domino's at 2602 Columbia Pike – the closest to the Pentagon, with a 3.8 rating – is an eight-minute drive away. Faster, you'd imagine, on a delivery bike, and a good 50-minute walk. You can't keep the generals waiting for their potato wedges. Who knows what button they might press when they're hangry.
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