The Preflight: 5 Things to Watch in Global Security | Week of June 29, 2026
The Iran deal can't verify what it promised to verify, Putin admitted his country is running out of fuel on state television, Venezuela has 1,430 confirmed dead and more.
Think of this as your weekly strategic weather report exclusively for paid subscribers every Monday. Five things to watch and what could break next in war, defense tech, and geopolitics. Just the pressure points most likely to shape the next seven days.
If you want to understand how I build my OSINT dashboard, I wrote about my workflow here:
Just a note, next Monday, July 6, I’ll be out of the office all day. Normally if I’m out, I’ll write an article in advance and schedule it to go live on my normally scheduled days. But the Preflight is a bit different. It’s the most recent OSINT update as of that morning. If I write it early, it will likely be out of date. If there’s no post next Monday, this is the reason why. For any huge news, I’ll be posting on Substack Notes, (this platform’s quasi-social network). Thanks.
Source links in the text. Let’s jump in:
BLUF:
The Iran deal can’t verify what it promised to verify. Putin admitted his country is running out of fuel on state television. Venezuela has 1,430 confirmed dead and 51,000 missing. US Marines just parked anti-ship missiles on Japan’s doorstep. And Europe is going into summer with empty gas tanks and a heatwave. Stay sharp.
1. The Iran Deal Has a Nuclear-Sized Hole in It. Tomorrow’s Doha Talks Are Where It Shows
US-Iran negotiations move to Doha tomorrow, June 30, for what are being described as the first substantive technical talks under the 60-day MOU framework. The nuclear verification file is the central agenda item, and the picture that has emerged from IAEA reporting this week is considerably more alarming than the deal’s headline coverage suggests.
