The Atlantic’s Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he was accidentally added by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz to a secret Signal chat that saw other leading national security officials planning the Trump Administration’s recent strikes against the Houthis. The participants included Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Vice President JD Vance, among a few other figures.
Apart from allegedly secret planning and targeting details, other newsworthy tidbits included Vance’s concerns about bailing out the Europeans, the sentiment of which Hegseth agreed with on the basis that they’re freeloading off of the US, and oil prices spiking. Hegseth also suggested that the messaging focus on how the Biden Administration’s deterrence policy failed, the Houthis’ Iranian funding, and restoring freedom off navigation. The National Security Council later confirmed the chat’s authenticity.
The Democrats predictably condemned this security lapse and called for a probe, clearly hoping to exploit this scandal to hold congressional hearings and possibly also impeach those who were involved, perhaps on the grounds that Goldberg suggested about how this might have violated federal records law. He reminded readers at the end of his explosive article about how “Text messages about official acts are considered records that should be preserved” and cited several legal opinions about this particular case.
It’s unclear whether any serious consequences will follow, but this episode is hugely embarrassing, especially since Trump and his circle demanded that Hillary Clinton be imprisoned for using a private email server during her time as Secretary of State. They’ve at the very least been exposed as hypocritical. The only way that Goldberg could have been accidentally added to the chat was because Waltz had his number, yet the public didn’t hitherto know that they were in contact, let alone possibly even friends.
This suggests that Waltz might have been holding off-the-record conservations with Goldberg that could have even included leaking. Speculation aside about why Waltz has Goldberg’s number, another scandalous implication is that nobody in the chat thought to check who was all invited, not even Gabbard or Ratcliffe. That in turn speaks to their carelessness, not to mention the fact that they were sharing secret details in a messaging app, which reflects very negatively on their professionalism.
There are international implications to this scandal too. According to Vance, Trump’s motive in authorizing these attacks was “to send a message”, with the secondary one being implied by Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. He wrote that the US expects something from Egypt and Europe in return for restoring freedom of navigation in the region despite only 3% of its trade running through the Suez Canal compared to 40% of Europe’s as Vance himself wrote in the chat.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi also earlier said that his country loses around $800 million a month due to the Houthis’ blockade that consequently slashed transit through the Suez Canal. The US is therefore doing a favor for the Europeans and Egyptians by degrading some of that group’s capabilities. As Hegseth wrote, “we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close”, yet it’s unknown exactly what the US will demand from them for this service.
To take a stab at it, Trump might want Egypt to accept Palestinian refugees from Gaza while he might also be aiming to have the Europeans commit to importing more LNG from the US, though it’s all speculative. In any case, the point is that the latest attacks against the Houthis were partially meant to obtain something from those two in exchange, thus undermining the administration’s messaging. There’s also an Israeli dimension to all of this as well.
One of the arguments that Hegseth shared for going through with this now instead of waiting a few weeks or a month like Vance suggested was that “Israel takes an action first – or Gaza cease fire falls apart – and we don’t get to start this on our own terms.” This is notable since it implies that the US doesn’t expect Israel to coordinate its “action(s)” in Yemen or give advance notice to the US of its plans to resume full-scale hostilities in Gaza, which could trigger more regular tit-for-tat Houthi-Israeli attacks.
In either case, the US wouldn’t get to initiate attacks on the Houthis on its own terms, instead responding to events beyond its control as opposed to shaping them by leading from the front for the purpose of restoring deterrence like Hegseth said is one of the administration’s motives. This aligns with what Vance said about how Trump mostly wants “to send a message” of some sort. What’s most important is that the US and Israel don’t coordinate as closely on Gaza and Yemen as some thought.
Instead, despite Trump being more pro-Israeli than the Biden Administration was by far, Israeli still isn’t comfortable closely coordinating with the US. This might have to do with concerns that anti-Israeli elements in the US’ permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) haven’t been rooted out, who might thus once again leak confidential information, or the Trump–Bibi tiff. Either way, Israel and the US aren’t working hand-in-hand, which should be a revelation for many.
And lastly, the leaked chat lacks any discussion of how to end this over decade-long civil-international war, which Associate Director of the Institute for Future Conflict at the US Air Force Academy Gregory D. Johnsen talked about in his article a week before Goldberg’s. He called for strengthening the divided Presidential Leadership Council’s (PLC) military and political capabilities, absent which the US’ attacks “will be unable to bend [the Houthis] to its will”, yet the Trump Administration has no plan in this regard.
On the one hand, the Saudis’ latest $1.3 trillion investment plans might incentivize the US into finally bolstering the PLC, while the UAE’s even more recent commitment to invest $1.4 trillion into the US economy could push it in the direction of supporting the restoration of South Yemeni independence. At present, however, no decision has been made on advancing either scenario. The US is therefore still bereft of any plan for ending this conflict, which greatly undermines its envisaged regional leadership.
Putting it all together, Goldberg’s article revealed a lot about the Trump Administration’s internal policymaking dynamics as well as some significant insight into the US’ relationship with Israel and its approach towards Yemen, which makes it a must-read for anyone who hasn’t already done so. Waltz will rue his mistake in accidentally adding Goldberg to that secret Signal chat, not just because it was hugely embarrassing, but also because it might take him and/or some of the others down as a result.
