🌬 🔥 🇺🇸 The air quality over the upper Midwest is just atrocious.

Unfortunately some of this makes its way to SNE over the next few days.

📎 Boston Weather Consulting

🇮🇷🕊🇺🇸 Iran Sent Message to JD Vance Warning that Kushner and Witkoff Were “Abusing” Their Inside Access to Negotiations

During the U.S.-Iran talks in Lake Lucerne, Switzerland in late June, Iranian negotiators sent a private message to Vice President JD Vance through an intermediary. The Iranians warned Vance that the continued presence of President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner would undermine the chance of turning the June 17 framework into an enduring deal, a senior Iranian official told Drop Site.

The Iranian official spoke to Drop Site on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly. In the message, according to the official, Iran conveyed to Vance that the pair were more interested in exploiting insider knowledge of the negotiations to profit in financial markets than they were in reaching a deal. Iranian negotiators also expressed concern about repeated leaks from Kushner to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (A U.S. official told Axios that since the negotiations began, Witkoff and Kushner “talk almost every day to Netanyahu” and the head of Mossad.)

In the weeks leading up to the signing of the memorandum of understanding, the official said, Iran presented written documentation to mediators of what it characterized as evidence that “individuals close to President Trump” were abusing the Iran war and diplomatic developments to manipulate financial markets. “Even before the Islamabad talks kicked off [in April], we had already sent multiple messages to Trump through the Pakistanis, warning them about [Witkoff’s] overall destructive role in the previous negotiation,” the Iranian official said.

The outreach to Vance came after these previous efforts to raise Tehran’s concerns about Witkoff and Kushner with the White House, the official said—given that messages passed to mediators are delivered broadly to the full U.S. team including Kushner, who is a private citizen with no official government role.

“We transmitted data and assessments through an exclusive channel to Mr. Vance,” said the senior Iranian official, who has direct knowledge of the effort. Iranian negotiators, he said, communicated to Vance that they believed Witkoff and Kushner were “abusing” the diplomatic process, “effectively disrupting the overall negotiating atmosphere.”

Drop Site was not able to independently confirm the intermediary actually delivered the message, though the Iranian official said Tehran was confident Vance had received it. The official declined to offer specifics. In response to a request for comment sent to the vice president’s office, a U.S. official denied Iran’s claims. “A message of this nature was never conveyed to the Vice President or his team,” the official told Drop Site. “Additionally, any insinuation that the other members of the president’s trusted negotiating team are operating under motives other than serving the president and delivering on his mission is false.”

Since the Iran war began, many financial analysts have described a pattern where speculative bets are placed or unusually large positions are taken in key markets related to the conflict and diplomatic events, including consistent announcements from Trump made just prior to the Monday openings of U.S. trading. This has led to widespread public speculation that people with access to inside information are manipulating markets in oil futures, energy stocks, and prediction markets.

In June, Iran calculated profits from such alleged manipulation had reached $9 billion and formally requested, in writing, that Iran should share in the proceeds. “We have conveyed through intermediaries that $4.5 billion of this sum should also be allocated to the Iranian side,” the Iranian official said. “The exchanged texts will ultimately become part of the historical record.”

Iran met for indirect diplomatic talks on February 6 in Oman and February 26 in Switzerland before the war began on February 28. “During our negotiation rounds in Oman, it had become completely clear to us that this person [Witkoff] had zero connection to diplomacy or actually advancing the talks,” the official added, saying that Witkoff had entirely misrepresented Iran’s positions on a range of issues, including what terms it was willing to offer the U.S. on the fate of its highly enriched uranium. Witkoff’s “mistaken impressions from the negotiations got passed on to Trump,” he charged.

🔗 https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/iran-jd-vance-kushner-witkoff-exploiting-negotiations

🇺🇸❌🇨🇺 — NEW: Senior Pentagon officials are quietly reviewing contingency plans for a potential military operation against Cuba, including an Army-led air assault involving the 101st Airborne Division, according to CBS News, citing multiple U.S. officials.

➡️ The planning is preliminary and does not indicate that President Trump or the Pentagon has decided to take military action, according to the officials. A concept-of-operations briefing outlining possible missions was held late last month as part of routine contingency planning.

➡️ Officials said the renewed war with Iran makes any action against Cuba unlikely for now, with U.S. forces heavily committed to the Middle East.

🇺🇸❌🇮🇷 — The recent waves of U.S. strikes on Iran aimed at forcing open the Strait of Hormuz are also targeting Iranian military capabilities that the U.S. would want to destroy before any broader military campaign, according to Reuters, citing U.S. officials.

One U.S. official said the strikes are "helping set the stage, if needed."

🇺🇸❌🇮🇷 — NEW: U.S. Central Command:

At 3 p.m. ET, U.S. forces launched operations for a second wave of strikes today against Iran.

The strikes are targeting Iranian military capabilities used to threaten vessels freely transiting through the Strait of Hormuz, an international waterway vital to global commerce.

The U.S. military is holding Iran accountable at the Commander in Chief's direction.

🇰🇵 🤝 🇨🇳 North Korean Foreign Relations: Satellite imagery shows that the PRC resumed covert shipments of supplies to North Korea, possibly indicating deepening bilateral economic ties. Satellite imagery from Planet revealed likely smuggling at sites near the Yalu River, a river on the PRC-North Korea border. The sites’ proximity to a major highway project suggests the PRC likely knew of and approved the smuggling. South Korean media outlet NK Pro reported on activity at 13 points and the “apparent cargo” seen at five sites between June 19 and 24 and at another five sites between June 28 and 29. Satellite imagery similarly revealed activity at a cargo depot in Samsu County, North Korea, and at a nearby train station.

North Korea has made efforts to deepen its ties with the PRC in recent months, likely to gain foreign currency and bolster North Korea’s struggling economy. The transfer of supplies took place following meetings between WPK General Secretary Kim Jong Un and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping in June, Xi’s first visit to North Korea in seven years. North Korea likely aims to balance its relationship with the PRC against its relationship with Russia, increasing its own material gains while avoiding dependency on the PRC.

📎 ISW

🏹 🇺🇦 🇷🇺 Many strikes by the Code 9.2 unit against Russian logistics and armor. They claim in total they hit 107 pieces of Russian equipment in 3 days.

📎 Woofers

🇺🇸❌🇮🇷 — NEW: U.S. Central Command says it disabled the Curaçao-flagged tanker M/T Belma as it sailed toward Iran’s Kharg Island earlier today.

➡️ CENTCOM said the unladen vessel ignored repeated warnings before a U.S. aircraft fired Hellfire missiles into its smokestack, stopping it from continuing toward the Iranian port.