US Counter-Terrorism Chief Resigns In Protest At Trump's Iran War

National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent resigned abruptly on Tuesday in protest of President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, now in its third week, accusing Israel of repeatedly luring the United States into conflicts. 

“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent said in his resignation letter to Trump.

He criticised Israel in harsh and at times feverish terms, bizarrely accusing the country of also being responsible for US involvement in the 2003 Iraq War and of “manufacturing” the Syrian civil war.

A political appointee who was confirmed last summer, Kent served under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a longtime critic of overseas military entanglements who has nonetheless been silent on Trump’s decision to start another war in the Middle East.

Trump has struggled to explain why he agreed to attack Iran when he did, alluding to vague threats the nation posed to US interests, as Americans start seeing higher costs at home. Thirteen US service members have been killed and around 200 injured in the conflict so far.

Kent said in his letter that he supported “the values and foreign policies” that Trump campaigned on in his past three presidential campaigns. Trump went so far as to dub himself the “President of Peace” in the last election cycle. 

Kent believes, however, that “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined” Trump’s platform and “sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.”

He went on, delving deeper into the supposed conspiracy: “This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory. This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women.” 

“You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos,” Kent wrote. “You hold the cards.”

Kent is a military veteran with 11 combat deployments under his belt. His wife, Shannon, was working in Navy intelligence when she was killed in Syria in 2019. 

He mentioned both of these facts in his letter, saying that he “cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed back on the letter’s contents. 

“I don’t know where Joe Kent is getting his information,” Johnson told reporters.

He said that he attended national security meetings with other Gang of Eight lawmakers — top Republicans and Democrats in both chambers of Congress — and that the group was shown evidence of an imminent threat.

But Democratic Senator Mark Warner, who was also in the meetings, has said that was not the case. 

Taylor Budowich, a former deputy chief of staff in the Trump White House, smeared Kent as a “crazed egomaniac who was often at the centre of national security leaks, while rarely (never?) producing any actual work.”

“This isn’t some principled resignation — he just wanted to make a splash before getting canned. What a loser,” Budowich said on X.

Read the letter here: