The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | March 29th, 2025: Signal Gate Fallout & Iran’s Hidden Hand in Yemen
Sat, 29 Mar 2025
In this episode of The PDB Situation Report: • We begin with the fallout from “Signal Gate,” the serious communications blunder that exposed sensitive U.S. military chatter during early strikes against the Houthis. Retired Army Colonel John Mills, former Director of Cybersecurity Policy at the Pentagon, joins us to break it all down. • Then: U.S. strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen are escalating—but who’s really calling the shots? Alireza Jafarzadeh, Deputy Director of the Washington Office for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, says the answer lies in Tehran. He joins us to explain how Iran’s regime is orchestrating the fight. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What was the Signalgate communications blunder?
Welcome to the PDB Situation Report. I'm Mike Baker. Your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get ourselves briefed. We're starting today's show with the latest on Signalgate. You knew it had to have a catchy name. That's the stunning blunder that exposed sensitive national security chatter during the early strikes against the Houthis.
Retired Army Colonel John Mills, former director of cybersecurity policy at the Pentagon, will join us to break that all down. Later in the show, U.S. strikes on the Houthis are ramping up. But how much of this fight is actually being run out of Tehran?
Now, Ali Reza Jafrizadeh, Deputy Director of the Washington Office for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, can't put that on a bumper sticker. Well, he says Iran's regime is pulling the strings. He joins us with the evidence. But first, today's Situation Report Spotlight. The Trump administration is facing serious questions after a major communications blunder now known as Signalgate.
During the early stages of U.S. strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, senior national security officials, and there were a lot of them, including the vice president and secretary of defense, were coordinating in a private Signal group chat. Now, if you don't know what Signal is, it's a commercial app. It's considered to be somewhat secure and discreet, certainly more so than an open line.
Unfortunately, during the course of this chat, someone mistakenly added the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg. Okay, enter a journalist. Sensitive details about the strikes, including targets and timing, were shared before the mistake was caught.
The incident, as you might imagine, has sparked concerns about operational security, what we would call OPSEC, and discipline at the highest levels. Joining us now is retired Army Colonel John Mills, former director of cybersecurity policy at the Department of Defense. perfect guy to talk to about Signalgate. Now, you can check him out on Substack at Colonel Rhett John.
You can also grab his excellent book, and that's called War Against the Deep State. If you don't already have it on your shelf, go out and get it, all right? If there's a bookstore near you. I don't know if we still have bookstores. John, welcome to the show, man. Hey, Mike. Always an honor to be on this show with you. Thank you so much. That's very kind of you to say.
I would like you, if you wouldn't mind, to write that down and send it as a note to my producers. Tell me what you think about Signalgate.
Well, I don't attach the word gate to it. I was one of the key people who had to deal with Hillary Clinton. And it wasn't just Hillary. It was a pervasive, intentional crime.
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Chapter 2: Who is Retired Army Colonel John Mills and what is his perspective on Signalgate?
We were first to expose the nuclear sites of the regime right here in Washington. In August of 2002, I revealed the nuclear sites in Natanz and the heavy weather facility in Iraq near Tehran. And then in a matter of a year, we revealed several other nuclear sites of Iran. We showed a complete picture of the nuclear weapons program of the regime, even though they were in early stages.
with the nuclear program, what's your perception? Where are they right now with their nuclear weapons development? And How do you view the current US administration's perspective on this? They've said they will not get a nuclear weapon, but what does that mean in your mind? I mean, you can talk about this.
I know Washington and other capital have been talking about this, but what we know on the ground from our information on the ground, it shows that they have a very advanced, sophisticated nuclear weapons program that is working on all levels, both in terms of the fissile material that you can get it from a rich uranium or plutonium.
They are working on the weaponization part, which has been very little overseeing on that. The IAEA is pretty much doing nothing about the weaponization part. And then the delivery system, building the missiles to carry the nuclear warheads.
We just had two press conferences within the past four months showing that the main organization in charge of building the nuclear bomb, known as CEPAD, S-P-N-D, which we first exposed in July 2011, and three years later it was sanctioned by the US government, that entity is heavily involved in developing nuclear warheads in , but also in Tehran.
So whether Khamenei decided to put all these pieces together and build a bomb, that's a different issue. We should get ourselves involved with that. We should look at the realities on the ground. It's not about their decision, it's about what they're doing. This program since day one has always been about developing nuclear weapons.
It's not about energy, and now they're moving towards that direction. But getting back to your first question about how to bring about change in Iran, change is going to happen. You need to have several elements. First, the population. has to be in a situation to reject the regime, which is already there since 2018. As I mentioned, there've been nine rounds of major uprisings.
It's not really the intellectuals anymore, it's the poor, the deprived, the smaller town cities who used to be the bedrock of support for the regime, who are now involved in the protests. you need to have the organized opposition to move things forward, to turn this content into change. And that's what those resistance units are doing on the ground, around the clock.
At least an average of seven acts of resistance are doing a day in Iran. Not much is being reported in the media. And third is with the role of the outside world. Is the outside world helping the regime in maintaining power or they're holding them accountable and squeezing them? This is the missing part over the past few years.
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