Counterterrorism chief Kent resigns over war: 'Iran was not an imminent threat'
The former director of the National Counterterrorism Center denounces Israeli pressure, refusing to support a conflict he deems unjustified and harmful to US national security
The US war in Iran has resulted in the excellent resignation of a senior counter-terrorism official, Joe Kent, who had twice received support from President Donald Trump in his attempts to run for Congress. Kent announced his resignation in a note posted on his X account, explicitly claiming Israel's role in dragging the United States into a conflict unjustified from the point of view of American internal security.
The now former director of the National Counterterrorism Center claimed that Trump was misled by senior Israeli officials and the US media into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to US security.
"I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran," Kent wrote in a letter published in X. "Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war because of pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby."
A spy of discontent in Trump's base
Kent, a Trumpian Republican with ties to right-wing extremism, had been confirmed in his post last July by 52 votes to 44. As head of the National Counterterrorism Center, he was at the head of an agency charged with analysing and identifying terrorist threats. His resignation reflects the discontent within Trump's base about the war and shows that doubts about the justification for the use of force in Iran extend to the right wing of the president's base and senior members of the administration.
The US president gave conflicting reasons for the attacks and dismissed claims that Israel forced the US to act. Earlier this month, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, had suggested that the White House believed Israel was determined to act on its own, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio, sparking a storm among the president's supporters, had suggested that Israel's determination to strike Iran had forced the US to act. Rubio later retracted these claims and Trump denied that this was the US administration's motivation. "Based on the way the negotiations were going, I think they would have attacked first," the US president had said, when asked if Israel had forced him to take action on Iran. "I didn't want that to happen. So, if anything, I may have forced Israel to do it."
