🇨🇩🤝🇮🇱 How Jeffrey Epstein’s Israeli Network Shaped Congo’s Deadly Mineral Trade

🔸 A Drop Site investigation by Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim, drawing on U.S. Justice Department records and hacked emails from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s account, reveals how Jeffrey Epstein and Barak built a business network that combined Israeli intelligence expertise, private military contracting, and access to Africa’s vast natural resources. The emails were obtained through the whistleblower group Distributed Denial of Secrets and independently verified by Drop Site.

🔸 After resigning as Israel’s defense minister in 2013, Barak worked with Epstein to market privatized Israeli intelligence, surveillance, and security services to governments confronting civil conflicts. Emails show Barak drew on his longtime intelligence contacts, including former Mossad chief Danny Yatom, to expand the venture across Africa.

🔸 One classified proposal from Yatom’s firm describes how Israeli intelligence veterans trained a 150-member elite Congolese special operations force during the 2012-2013 war against the Rwandan-backed M23 rebellion in eastern Congo. Yatom claimed the unit’s night raids and special operations helped turn the tide of the war.

🔸 As fighting subsided, the network’s focus shifted from military contracts to business opportunities. Emails show Epstein’s close associate Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, chairman of Dubai-based DP World, opening channels to Congolese President Joseph Kabila over investments in mining, oil, gas, ports, and transport infrastructure.

🔸 The investigation places those efforts within a much longer history of foreign governments, mining companies, intelligence agencies, and military contractors competing for influence over Congo’s enormous reserves of copper, cobalt, coltan, diamonds, and other strategic minerals. By 2018, Epstein was participating in discussions around U.S. Treasury sanctions targeting Congo’s mining economy, including the holdings of sanctioned Israeli mining magnate Dan Gertler.

🔸 Our report traces those same dynamics into the present. As Washington moves to challenge China’s dominance over Congo’s critical minerals, a U.S.- and UAE-backed consortium is seeking control of major copper and cobalt assets once tied to Gertler. At the same time, Blackwater founder Erik Prince, working alongside Israeli advisers, is helping retrain Congolese special forces to fight M23 around the same mineral-rich region.

🔸 The investigation highlights that while the geopolitical players and technologies have changed, the competition over Congo’s mineral wealth continues. Foreign governments, military contractors, and multinational investors remain deeply involved in the country’s resource sector, while little of the wealth generated by Congo’s vast natural resources reaches the Congolese people.

🔗 https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/epstein-barak-congo-israel

🇺🇸 Kash Patel’s girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, sings the national anthem at the Great American State Fair.

Wilkins, known for her relationship with Patel, has fewer than 7k monthly Spotify listeners and hopes to become a country music singer one day, having released music since 2020.

Wilkins’ confirmation for the Freedom 250 event lineup could be the 27-year-old’s big break, with Con Inc praising her as a “future superstar.”

🔗 AF Post (@AFpost)

🇮🇶⚡️ — Iraq is facing a financial crisis following a sharp drop in oil exports caused by the Iran war, Reuters reports.

➡️ Iraqi officials have considered leaving OPEC but currently plan to remain and push for a higher production quota, warning that if the quota is not significantly increased, they will be forced to consider all available options.

🇸🇾⚔️🇱🇧🇱🇧 Speculation about a Syrian invasion of Lebanon is gaining momentum.

After Trump announced on 14 June that he was going to invite Jolani to the White House, the STG deployed fresh troops to Al Quseir. However, this deployment has not only continued but has intensified over the last two weeks. It should be noted, however, that this deployment has been ongoing since April 2026.

The areas of deployment are as follows:

A. South of Tartous, including a number of towns along a border strip stretching from the al-Aridhah Cross Border to the Talkalakh Cross Border. The areas of concentration are al-Dakika, Tell Wa’wa and Talkalakh. On the other side of the border, the Lebanese Armed Forces have reinforced their positions at Qoleiat Airport, Hissa and Qoubaiyat. It is worth noting that this area is highly sensitive for the Lebanese army. On the one hand, there is a Sunni majority that may be sympathetic to the entry of the STG. On the other hand, there is a significant presence of Alawite insurgents in the mountains, who may offer support to Lebanese soldiers but could also be a source of further conflict amongst the local population.

B. The Qusayr District comprises a border strip stretching from Al-Nizariyah to Al-Hawi. This area remains a hub for Captagon trafficking following the replacement in 2025 of the previous traffickers by new ones backed by the Syrian transitional government.

C. Qalamoun, a long strip stretching from the Qarah to Yabroud sub-districts, opposite the Lebanese district of Baalbek.

D. West Damascus, a strip between the Jadida, Yabus and Serghaya border crossings, opposite the Lebanese Beqaa Governorate.

It is important to note that the last three areas lie opposite territory with a strong Hezbollah presence, which further reinforces the aim of a Syrian operation in support of Israel to subdue and eliminate the Lebanese resistance.

All this despite the fact that Jolani stated four days ago in an interview that he had no intention of invading the neighbouring country; external pressures are forcing him to take a significant decision regarding his international support (read: from his main sponsors) in the coming days, which would involve violating the first point of the MoU signed between Iran and the US.

🔗 Suriyak

🇮🇱🕊🇱🇧🇱🇧 Israel has withdrawn from part of southern Lebanon security zone, US official claims

There is no immediate comment from Israel. A senior Lebanese security official says they are unaware of any withdrawal of Israeli troops from its so-called security zone in southern Lebanon.

The State Department official does not say how much territory Israel withdrew from or where exactly the pullback occurred. Israel and Lebanon have been holding US-brokered talks in Washington aimed in part at halting fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah.

“Israel has already taken a concrete step by pulling back from a part of its buffer zone. This is a significant demonstration of good faith toward Lebanon’s legitimate government,” the official says.

“The [Lebanese Armed Forces] should now move in and verifiably clear out terrorist weapons and infrastructure. This model will be repeated across South Lebanon, enabling the safe return of displaced families, reconstruction of the south, and the restoration of full Lebanese sovereignty,” the official adds.

🔗 https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israel-has-withdrawn-from-part-of-southern-lebanon-security-zone-us-official-claims/

🇺🇸🤝🇹🇷 A Turkish Arms Sale Leads to a Face-Off Between Trump and Congress

Administration is expected to push for a rare override to get the deal through as the NATO summit in Ankara approaches

The Trump administration is expected to override a decision by a Democratic lawmaker who is blocking a proposed $750 million sale of jet engines to Turkey over concerns about the country’s ties to Russia.

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D., N.Y.) had placed a hold on the sale to Turkey—a NATO ally that is hosting an alliance summit next month—because the country continues to hold a Russian S-400 air-defense system that it bought roughly a decade ago, along with other concerns about Turkey’s role in the region.

Asked about the proposed sale and the decision to bypass Congress, an administration official said, “President Trump has a great relationship with President Erdoğan of Turkey, who has been a great partner in the region.”

President Trump is expected to visit the Turkish capital, Ankara, in July for a summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The disagreement shows the limits of a recent thaw in Turkish-American ties resulting from a warm personal relationship between Trump and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has lobbied the U.S. to lift limits on arms sales to Turkey.

https://archive.ph/20260624225732/https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/a-turkish-arms-sale-leads-to-a-face-off-between-trump-and-congress-ee55c700

🇺🇸🕊🇮🇷 US-Iran deal may leave Netanyahu as biggest casualty

The biggest casualty of the U.S.-Iran deal may not be Israel's Iran strategy, but the political brand Benjamin Netanyahu spent decades building as the Israeli leader who could uniquely bend Washington to his will on Iran, analysts, former U.S. officials and diplomats ​say.

Netanyahu shaped his political identity on an audacious assertion: that he alone could keep the U.S. and Israel in strategic lockstep on Iran. Cultivating Republican support, he cast himself as the only Israeli leader capable of influencing successive ‌U.S. presidents and insisted that only sustained military pressure could contain Tehran.

At the height of his power, he was described by diplomats as the "American whisperer" — the Israeli leader who could pick up the phone and ensure Washington’s strategic calculus aligned with that of Israel. No other Israeli prime minister, they note, addressed Congress as often or built such enduring political capital across the American political system.

But analysts say Washington and Tehran's interim pact to end the war that the U.S. and Israel launched in February shows how that narrative has been reversed. Rather than shaping Washington’s Iran policy, Netanyahu is now forced to accept it, as U.S. President Donald Trump ​pursues a settlement that increasingly treats Israeli objections as constraints.

At home, the reckoning is equally stark, said former U.S. official Dennis Ross. Netanyahu is increasingly boxed in between a U.S. president intent on ending the conflict and a domestic base resistant to ​concessions, particularly in Lebanon, he said. Withdrawal risks political backlash while escalation risks confrontation with Washington.

The war Netanyahu hoped would cement his legacy as the leader who confronted Iran may instead be remembered as the ⁠conflict that dismantled a central source of his power. Isolated abroad, constrained by his closest ally and vulnerable ahead of an autumn election, he now finds the political asset on which he built his career has become his greatest liability.

At the outset of the war with Iran, ​Netanyahu promised ultimate victory. He delivered neither the collapse of Iran’s ruling system, nor the defeat of Lebanon's Hezbollah, nor safe return for residents of northern Israel.

🔗 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-iran-deal-may-leave-netanyahu-biggest-casualty-2026-06-24/

🇷🇺⚔️🇺🇦 Situational update on the Konstantinovka direction:

Over the last week, the situation has continued to deteriorate for Ukrainian forces in Konstantinovka as Russian forces continue to clear the remaining parts of the city still under Ukrainian control. Additionally, Russian forces have intensified assault operations on the flanks of the city in preparation to advance towards Druzhkovka once Konstantinovka is captured.

As recently seen in Pokrovsk and Myrnograd, some of the areas of Konstantinovka shown in red contain small, isolated groups of Ukrainian soldiers trapped in individual positions behind the lines. These positions do not pose any significant threat to Russia, and do not affect their offensive, hence why they are not represented by any grey-zone on the map.

🔗 AMK Mapping

🛢 Oil prices are falling with inventories!

Logic!

🔗 HFI Research

🇮🇱📉 The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange index, TASE, is now down 22% the past month

Its market cap has fell to 12.7 billion shekels, erasing all gains made during the 3rd Gulf War

@CIG_telegram

🇺🇸🇮🇷 Rubio: The Iranian regime is still led by extremist clerics. This has always been the case, and it continues to be so today.

🔗 Open Source Intel (@Osint613)

🚢 Hormuz traffic sees a sharp d/d uptick

Confirmed Strait of Hormuz crossings rose to 70 on 24 June, up 105% day on day, as demining efforts advanced and operators increasingly used the Omani route. Commercial traffic accounted for most activity, with 53 transits, while low-risk vessels dominated the day’s profile. The US-Iran MoU framework and apparent lifting of the US blockade appear to have supported a short-term confidence boost, although IRGC warnings against use of the Omani route could create a new source of contention.

IMO-route use picked up slightly, but continued Dark routing, incomplete demining and unresolved issues over inspections, sanctions and future Strait governance mean the rebound is not yet a confirmed return to pre-crisis conditions.

🔗 Kpler (@Kpler)