The director of the National Counterterrorism Center, a retired Green Beret and longtime supporter of President Donald Trump, says he has resigned over the war in Iran.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation," Joe Kent said in a statement posted on X on Tuesday. "It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby."
The National Counterterrorism Center oversees U.S. government intelligence on terrorist threats and retains a database of all known and suspected terrorists.
Kent worked under Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence and the two were political allies. Gabbard has kept a low profile since the war started and has previously criticized U.S. military interventions abroad.
Kent wrote in a letter to Trump posted on X that he supported the president's values during his first term. But he said Trump had been wrongly swayed by the Israelis and he could not 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."
Kent served in the Army Special Forces, undertaking 11 combat deployments during a 20-year career, and later worked at the CIA. His wife, Shannon Kent, a Navy cryptologist, died in a terrorist bombing in Syria in 2019.
Trump and his supporters have said the intelligence community sought to undermine the president in the past and needed a radical overhaul.
Kent's placement at the center was part of a wider effort by the administration to put trusted loyalists and partisan activists in senior government positions in intelligence, law enforcement and diplomacy. He called rioters “political prisoners” and has had ties to a man police say was a member of the Proud Boys far-right group.
Kent came under scrutiny in May after two veteran intelligence analysts were fired by Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, after their assessment contradicted claims by the White House about the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua and its relationship with the regime in Caracas. President Trump had asserted that the gang operated under the direction of the Venezuelan regime, but the analysts concluded that was not the case.
Emails released by Gabbard’s office showed Kent pressing the intelligence analysts to amend their assessment to adhere more closely to the Trump administration’s view and to add criticism of immigration policies pursued by the former Biden administration.
