Joe Kent, Director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, speaks during a congressional debate at KATU studios Oct. 7, 2024, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo)
Kent said on social media that 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 was confirmed to his post last July on a 52-44 vote. As head of the National Counterterrorism Center, he was in charge of an agency tasked with analyzing and detecting terrorist threats.
His resignation reflects unease within Trump’s base about the war and shows that questions about the justification for the use of force in Iran extend to at least one senior member of Trump’s Republican administration.
Kent’s decision came down to the reasoning behind the strikes on Iran, or what he said was the lack thereof, he wrote in his resignation letter.
Trump has offered shifting reasons for the strikes and has pushed back on claims that Israel forced the U.S. to act. House Speaker Mike Johnson has suggested the White House believed Israel was determined to act on its own, leaving the Republican president with a “very difficult decision.”
In an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said he always thought Kent was “weak on security” and if someone in his administration did not believe Iran was a threat, “we don’t want those people.”
“They’re not smart people, or they’re not savvy people,” Trump said. “Iran was a tremendous threat.”
A spokesperson for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard did not immediately respond to questions about Kent’s resignation.
Democrats strongly opposed Kent’s confirmation, pointing to his past ties to far-right figures and conspiracy theories. But following his resignation, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Kent’s concerns about the war in Iran were justified.
“I strongly disagree with many of the positions he has espoused over the years, particularly those that risk politicizing our intelligence community,” Warner said. “But on this point, he is right: There was no credible evidence of an imminent threat from Iran that would justify rushing the United States into another war of choice in the Middle East.”
Johnson, though, pushed back on Kent’s claims when asked about the resignation at a press conference on Tuesday.
“I got all the briefings. We all understood that there was clearly an imminent threat that Iran was very close to the enrichment of nuclear capability and they were building missiles at a pace no one in the region could keep up with,” Johnson said.
Johnson said he is convinced that if Trump had waited “we would have mass casualties of Americans, service members and others, and our installation would have been dramatically damaged.”
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