Joe Kent, one of the United States’ top counterterrorism officials, announced his resignation on Tuesday, citing his opposition to the Iran war and what he said was Israel’s influence over the Trump administration’s policies.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Centre, wrote in a social media post. “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’s post included a resignation letter addressed to US president Donald Trump, in which he argued that Israeli officials drew the United States into the conflict with Iran.
In the letter, Kent wrote about what he saw as a “misinformation campaign” by high-ranking Israeli officials and the news media, which he said had undermined Trump’s “America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.”
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A veteran of the Iraq War, Kent said the arguments in support of attacking Iran, and promises of a swift victory, echoed the debate over going to war against Iraq in 2003.
Kent also referred to his late wife Shannon, a military cryptologist killed in Syria.
“As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I 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,” he wrote.
Kent has been a key adviser to Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and has been a voice advocating inside the administration for a more restrained foreign policy.
Kent’s resignation highlights the deep divisions among Trump’s Republican supporters over the Iran war, now in its third week.
A former green beret, Kent earned Trump’s endorsement in his failed bids for Congress in 2022 and 2024, and had espoused some of the president’s most controversial theories.
Kent once described Russian president Vladimir Putin’s goals in Ukraine as “very reasonable” and had repeated Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a role in the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
His argument that Israel forced the US into the war against Iran is shared by many on the right but denied by Trump.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio touched off a storm among the president’s supporters earlier this month when he suggested that Israel’s determination to strike Iran had forced the US to act.
Rubio later backtracked and Trump denied that was the US rationale.
“Based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were going to attack first,” Trump said, when asked if Israel forced his hand on Iran. “I didn’t want that to happen. So, if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand.”
That argument did not satisfy Kent. “I pray that you will reflect upon what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for,” Kent wrote, in his resignation letter.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
