The President's Daily Brief - July 3rd, 2026: Has An Insurgency Begun Inside Iran? & Russia's NATO Intelligence Campaign

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

In this episode of The President's Daily Brief: Violence is surging in Iran's Kurdish northwest, raising a critical question: are we witnessing the early stages of a new insurgency against the regime? Mike Baker examines the latest attacks on Iran's Revolutionary Guard and what they could signal about Tehran's internal stability. A mystery is solved. A new report suggests Russia's years-long drone campaign may have served a second purpose: quietly mapping weaknesses in NATO's air defense network. The Trump administration moves against an alleged Cuban influence operative who authorities say spent years working on behalf of Havana inside the United States. In today's Back of the Brief—an extraordinary rescue in Venezuela offers a rare moment of hope as emergency crews pull a survivor alive from earthquake rubble more than a week after devastating twin temblors. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting https://PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Lean: Get 20% off plus free rush shipping when you go to https://TAKELEAN.com and use code PDB Goldbelly: Celebrate America’s 250th with iconic foods delivered—get free shipping and 20% off your first order at https://GOLDBELLY.com with code PDB. HomeServe: Protect your home systems from expensive repairs with https://HomeServe.com/dailybrief and get 50% off your first year of coverage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's Friday, the 3rd of July. Welcome to the President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, violence is surging in Iran's Kurdish-Northwest along the Iran-Iraq border, which raises the question, are we witnessing the early stages of an insurgency against the regime? Later in the show, a mystery is solved. After years of drones appearing in the skies over dozens of European countries,

a new report reveals Russia may have been. been quietly mapping NATO's air defense weaknesses. Plus, yet another story of espionage and intrigue. The Trump administration moves against an alleged Cuban influence operative who authorities say spent years working on behalf of Havana inside the U.S. And in today's back of the brief, we head to Venezuela, where an extraordinary rescue has given the country a rare moment of hope and grace following last week's deadly earthquakes. But first, today's PDB spotlight. Fighting is escalating in Iran's Kurdish northwest.

Over the past several days, Kurdish militant groups have launched a series of attacks on Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, and other security forces, leaving multiple people dead on both sides. The clashes have spread across several cities near Iran's border with Iraq, prompting Tehran to respond with heavy artillery, drones, and additional military forces. On its own, that would not necessarily be remarkable. Iran has fought sporadic clashes with Kurdish militants for decades, but this week's violence, according to local sources, feels different.

Instead of a single border skirmish, we're seeing attacks across multiple provinces, multiple armed groups claiming responsibility, and a tempo of violence that raises a larger question. has an insurgency begun in Iran? While it's too early to make any definitive statement, the warning signs for the regime may have begun appearing. Let's start with what we know. Earlier this week, two members of the IRGC were reportedly killed in the border city of Pave in Kermanshaw province, after gunmen opened fire. Around the same time, attackers struck a police checkpoint in Bane, another Kurdish-majority city, closer to the Iraqi border, killing two police

officers and injuring several others. Then came additional reports of fighting in and around Maravan, Mahabad, Saddashd and Perenshar, areas that sit along Iran's mountainous western frontier, where Kurdish opposition groups have operated for years. By Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, the fighting had intensified near Sardashd and Perrashar, with Iranian outlets and Kurdish sources, both reporting multiple deaths. Iran's Revolutionary Guards claimed they had ambushed and killed members of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, the PDKI, after the group allegedly entered Iranian territory from Iraq. Kurdish-linked outlets, meanwhile, reported that Iranian forces were using heavy weaponry near populated areas. Well, frankly, from the regime's perspective,

after killing thousands of their own citizens during the protests earlier this year, killing Kurds isn't exactly a stretch for the IRGC and besieged militia. There were also reports of drone strikes targeting Kurdish opposition camps across the border in Iraq's Kurdistan region, another familiar feature of Turkran's playbook. When Iran feels threatened by Kurdish militants inside its own territory, it often responds by striking the networks that it believes are supporting them from Iraq. Now, that's the top line news, but the deeper story is about pressure building inside Iran. The Kurds are one of the largest stateless ethnic groups in the Middle East, with communities spread across Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.

In Iran, many Kurds live in the country's west and northwest, where opposition groups have long accused the regime of repression, forced assimilation, executions, and military crackdowns. Tehran, well, they see the issue very differently. To the Islamic Republic, armed Kurdish factions are separatist threats. Groups like the PGA and the PDKI have clashed with the IRGC for decades, usually in remote border areas and usually in bursts of violence that flare up and then die down. So the question now is whether this is another flare-up or something more durable.

There are several reasons to watch this situation closely. First, the geography. The violence is not confined to one village or one mountain pass. It's been reported across several Kurdish-majority areas in western and northwestern Iran. That doesn't prove coordination, but it does suggest a broader security. security problem for Tehran. Second, the tempo. These incidents have unfolded in rapid succession

with IRGC personnel, police officers, and Kurdish fighters all reportedly killed within days of each other. Insurgencies often begin not with one dramatic announcement, but with a rising rhythm of attacks that slowly becomes harder for the state to contain. Third is the messaging. A little-known armed group, calling itself Xorheva or a son of hope, claimed responsibility for one attack,

saying it was retaliation for the IRGC's role in suppressing the protests that followed the 22 death of Masa Amini. Now, that matters because Amini was Kurdish. Her death in the custody of Iran's morality police sparked nationwide protests, of course, but in Iran's Kurdish regions, the anger was especially intense. For many Kurds, the IRC is not just a military force. It's the arm of the regime, most closely associated with crackdowns, arrests, and indenting intimidation. And finally, there's the timing. Iran is trying to steady itself after its recent

war with Israel and the U.S. That conflict exposed vulnerabilities in Iran's security apparatus and damaged the prestige of the IRGC. At the same time, the regime is engaged in their supposed negotiations with the U.S. For Kurdish opposition figures, that's not necessarily good news. Many believe any U.S. deal with the regime will strengthen Tehran, ease outside pressure, and give the government more breathing room to crack down internally, especially in places like Kurdistan, Balukistan, and Azerbaijan, where anti-regime activism has been strongest. There's also a recent military backdrop here. During the war, Kurdish armed groups were discussed as a potential pressure point against Iran. There were reports that Israel had looked at ways to

support Iranian Kurdish militias, and President Trump said he would be open to Kurdish forces moving against Tehran if their objective was to win. But that broader front never opened. Kurdish commanders were reportedly frustrated by mixed signals from Washington and Israel, while Iranian threats and strikes against Kurdish positions in Iraq helped keep them from making a major move. And to be fair, the U.S. relationship with the Kurds has been a series of mixed signals for decades. Still, those discussions revealed something important. The networks were there, the armed groups were there, the strategic interest was there. Now, with diplomacy back on the table, some Kurdish factions may fear that that window is closing. Now, the latest violence doesn't prove that

Iran is facing a full-scale Kurdish insurgency. There's no clear evidence yet of a unified command, a sustained campaign, or a coordinated effort to seize and hold territory. But these are exactly the indicators intelligence analysts watch for, a rising tempo of attacks, widening geography, government casualties, militant claims of responsibility, cross-border safe havens, and a political grievance powerful enough to sustain violence. Iran is now seeing several of those indicators all at once. All right. Coming up next, we'll explain how Russia may have spent years quietly mapping NATO's air defense weaknesses. Plus, the Trump administration has moved against an alleged Cuban influence operative working in the U.S. I'll be right back.

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Welcome back to the PDB. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you may remember the steady stream of stories that we've covered about mysterious drones appearing over military bases, ports, airports, and other sensitive sites across Europe. At the time, many of those incidents seemed isolated. Some governments blamed hobbyists. Others quietly suspected Russia, but couldn't prove it.

Each event was treated as its own security problem. And now we may finally have an answer. According to a new report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, those drone sightings were likely part of a coordinated 19-month intelligence campaign orchestrated by Russia, not simply to gather intelligence, but to systematically identify weaknesses in NATO's air defenses. The London-based think tank documented nearly 100, 150 suspicious drone incursions across more than a dozen NATO countries, as well as Ireland, between August of 2024 and February of this year. The targets were hardly random.

Drones appeared over military airbases in Britain, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Others were spotted near France's Ilong Nuclear Submarine Base, while one swarm forced the temporary closure of Copenhagen Airport. Dutch fighter jets were scrambled to intercept drones flying over vocal air base late last year. Taken individually, those incidents were concerning, but viewed together, they paint a different picture. The report concludes that Russia was likely conducting what military planners call, quote, reconnaissance by battle. Rather than simply photographing military installations, Moscow was deliberately probing NATO's defenses, watching to see how quickly allied forces responded, which systems detected the drones, where legal authorities prevented action, and where the alliance's

defenses were weakest. In other words, the drones weren't just collecting intelligence. They were collecting intelligence about how NATO collects intelligence and responds to perceived threats. The report also raises another troubling possibility. Investigators believe many of these drones may have been launched from Russian commercial vessels, including ships from Moscow's so-called shadow fleet operating in the Baltic and North Seas. Those vessels could have served as launch platforms, recovery points, or communications relays, allowing the drones to operate far from Russian territory while making attribution far more difficult. The study identifies four likely objectives behind the campaign. First, surveilling NATO's nuclear and other high-value military facilities. Second,

testing, allied response times, and procedures. Third, mapping logistics networks and transportation routes that would become vital during a future conflict. And finally, imposing, and psychological costs by forcing governments to repeatedly investigate unexplained drone incursions while keeping the public guessing about who was responsible. Perhaps the most striking conclusion isn't about Russia's capabilities. It's about NATO's response. According to the report, there was no coordinated allied effort to connect these incidents across national borders. Instead, governments largely treated them as isolated events, focusing on domestic investigations rather than recognizing what may have been a continent-wide intelligence campaign.

The report also argues that Russia exploited more than just gaps in Europe's radar coverage. It took advantage of legal gray areas that often prevented militaries from shooting down drones during peacetime, particularly overpopulated areas where falling debris could endanger civilians. The bottom line is this. What looked like dozens of unrelated drone sightings may actually have been a single, coordinated operation designed to expose weaknesses in NATO's defenses. And it's a reminder that in modern warfare, intelligence gathering doesn't always happen in secret. Sometimes it happens in plain sight,

with the target, never realizing the bigger picture until much later. Okay, I want to turn now to a major national security investigation that's unfolding in the U.S. After federal agents took three Cuban nationals into custody, a move that the Trump administration says escalates its campaign against Havana's alleged political influence network that's operating on American soil. According to the State Department, the three include Carlos Antonio Loga Dominguez, a man federal agency spent more than a decade serving as a, quote, foreign subversive

for the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the People. That doesn't sound suspicious. It's better known as ICAP. His wife and son are also in federal custody, bending removal, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked their legal status. Now, if you've never heard of ICAP before, that's basically by design. It doesn't attract nearly the same attention as Cuba's intelligence services. But according to the State Department, it spent decades doing something arguably just as important for the communist regime, building political influence well beyond the island's borders. In fact, the State Department describes ICAP as the communist regime's, quote, premier influence and intelligence front group operating inside the U.S.

So, what exactly is ICAP? Well, by the State Department's account, the organization was founded by Fidel Castro, remember him, in 1960, to spread Marxism around the world. Oh, look, they may have been working overtime in New York City lately. Today, federal officials describe it as a central hub of a sprawling Cuban intelligence and influence operation spanning more than 2,000 organizations across more than 150 countries. They accuse ICAP of maintaining a, quote, out-sized footprint across the U.S., trafficking anti-American propaganda,

cultivating pro-Havana activists, lobbying federal, state, and local elected officials on behalf of the Cuban dictatorship, and coordinating influence operations designed to advance Havana's interests. The State Department further alleges that the organization has worked alongside far-left groups in the U.S. to quote, export Cuba's communist revolution to the U.S. ICAP, of course, has denied those allegations and insists it's simply a civil society organization. What? Us? Communists? Come on. Nothing to see here, folks. Or comrades? Now, none of this is happening in a vacuum. The arrests come just weeks after Rubio sanctioned ICAP, freezing any U.S.-based assets, and generally prohibiting Americans from doing business with the organization.

In other words, what began with financial pressure has expanded into criminal enforcement. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, left little doubt about how the Trump administration views the campaign. He posted on X, quote, America will never become home for foreign communists who peddle propaganda, run subversive influence operations, or support radical anti-American movements, transact with ICAP, and you'll be sanctioned, prosecuted, or deported from our country, end quote. A Fox News investigation reported that over the last decade, ICAP closely coordinated with a network of American non-profit organizations supporting the Communist Party of Cuba. Altogether, roughly 145 nonprofits, labor groups, advocacy organizations, and activist collectives, ooh, activist collectives across the U.S.

have mobilized in support of the Cuban regime and collectively report approximately $1 billion in annual revenue. It does make you wonder if the Democratic Socialists of America, the DSA is included in that overall effort. Someone should look into that. But I digress. The network is what's drawing the attention of federal investigators. So while only three people have been taken into custody so far, the Trump administration is signaling that it views these arrests not as the end of the investigation, but as the opening move. And what it expects will be a much broader effort

to identify, sanction, and dismantle Havana's alleged political influence network operating inside the U.S. All right. Coming up in the back of the brief, the latest from Venezuela, where rescuers have accomplished what many thought was impossible, pulling a survivor from the rubble more than a week after the devastating earthquakes. More on that when we come back. Hey, Mike Baker here. Now, this 4th of July, which as you might have noticed is right around the corner, it's the nation's 250th birthday. You've got to do it upright. So this is what I want you to do. Celebrate it with America's favorite foods from

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For this price, moment. Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg. In today's back of the brief, a remarkable rescue in Venezuela is giving the country and the international rescue effort a moment of hope. Against increasingly impossible odds, emergency crews on Thursday pulled a man alive from the rubble of a collapsed apartment building, triggering cheers, hugs, and tears from rescuers who spent days attempting to reach him. With the official death toll approaching 2,300, and tens of thousands of people still unaccounted for. The rescue of a security guard has become a rare reminder

that even eight days after the twin magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes, survivors might still be found. He was carried from the ruins on a stretcher after rescuers spent three days, painstakingly extracting him from the collapsed seven-story building where he worked in the hardest-hit city of Ligwira, just north of Caracas. Waiting anxiously as rescuers worked to free him, his wife told AFP, quote, this is truly a miracle. The rescue quickly became a symbol of the international response unfolding across Venezuela.

As we've discussed here on the PDB, the operation brought together search and rescue teams from the U.S., Chile, Portugal, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Mexico, working around the clock, carefully removing debris while trying to avoid triggering additional collapses in surrounding buildings that are already weakened by the earthquakes. A task force leader with the Los Angeles County Fire Department told CBS News that, quote, It was a very complex rescue. I have multiple buildings leaning into that building where we were trying to rescue him from. Now, this rescue wasn't the only small miracle to emerge from the rubble. Earlier in the response, Cruz rescued an 18-day-old baby and the child's mother after they spent 32 hours trapped beneath the collapsed high-rise. In another rescue, Virginia Urban Search and Rescue Task Force One pulled a mother and her nine-month old baby from the rubble with only minor injuries. But those moments have become increasingly rare.

Preliminary satellite analysis released by NASA estimates that nearly 59,000 buildings were either damaged or destroyed. In Liguayra, many collapsed buildings have now been marked with the letter D for deceased, indicating that rescue crews completed their searches without finding anyone alive. Venezuela's National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez said Wednesday that more than 11,000 were injured, and nearly 13,000 are now homeless. Tens of thousands more remain unaccounted for, while the U.S. Geological Survey warns that the final death toll

could ultimately climb into the tens of thousands. Acting Venezuelan President Delci Rodriguez has declared seven days of national mourning, saying the country's soul is torn apart by the human losses. For the survivors, a new struggle is beginning. Food and clean water are becoming scarce. Aid lines are growing longer, and thousands remain with electricity.

relying largely on volunteers and emergency assistance. And that, my friends, is the President's Daily Brief for Friday, the 3rd of July. Now, if you have any questions or comments, and I hope you do, please reach out to me at PDB at thefirsttv.com. And upon waking up this morning, you might have noticed that it's Friday, and that, of course, can only mean one thing. A brand new episode of our much-loved weekend show, the PDB Situation Report, hits the airwaves this evening at 10 p.m. on the first TV. And as always, you can catch it and past episodes on our YouTube channel. Just head on over to YouTube and search up at President's Daily Brief. And, of course, you can find it on podcast platforms everywhere.

I'm Mike Baker, and I'll be back later today with the PDB afternoon bulletin. Until then, stay informed. Stay safe. Stay cool.