Joe Kent resigned as head of the National Counterterrorism Centre over the US and Israeli war on Iran. Photo / Getty Images
The US intelligence community’s top counter-terrorism official says he is resigning over the US and Israeli war on Iran.
“After much reflection, I have decided to resign,” Joe Kent, the head of the National Counterterrorism Centre, posted on X in a letter to President Donald Trump. “… I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.”
Kent continued: “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.”
A staunch supporter of Trump, Kent was confirmed as NCTC director in July.
Kent is the first administration official to openly break ranks with the White House and resign over the war.
Kent, like his boss, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, has long been in the anti-intervention camp. Gabbard has campaigned against US wars and involvement in conflicts abroad since her time as a Democratic congresswoman. She has not spoken about the Iran war in public or on her normally busy X feed since the conflict began on February 28.
In his letter, Kent lauded Trump for previously having used military power “without getting us drawn into never-ending wars”. He cited the US killing of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani and the defeat of the Islamic State during the first Trump administration.
“Until June of 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation,” wrote Kent, a former Green Beret who deployed to combat 11 times. His wife, Shannon, a Navy cryptologist, was killed in 2019 with three other Americans when a suicide bomber detonated his vest outside a restaurant in northern Syria.
He accused, without mentioning names, “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” of deploying a “misinformation campaign that wholly undermined [Trump’s] America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran”.
Kent did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reaction to the bombshell announcement was swift on both sides of the aisle.
Former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a onetime Trump ally who fell out with the President over foreign policy, healthcare and the controversy over releasing the Epstein files, posted on X: “Joe Kent is a GREAT AMERICAN HERO. God bless him and protect him!’’
Democrat representative Jim Himes,who has accused the administration of lacking a coherent rationale for the war, posted: “At least someone in this Administration is willing to stand by their principles’.’
Democrat Senator Mark R. Warner, vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he disagrees with many of Kent’s views. “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.”
Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned in protest of the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza, applauded Kent’s move.
“In his resignation letter, Joe Kent echoes a warning on the danger of foreign entanglements that is as old as the Republic,” said Paul, co-founder of advocacy organisation A New Policy. “Israel’s interests are not America’s – and its war with Iran should not be our war. It is well past time for our nation to question our unconditional support to Israel, and to put American interests first.”
But Republican representative Don Bacon, an Air Force veteran and frequent critic of Trump’s foreign policy, took issue in an X post with what he alleged were anti-semitic overtones in Kent’s letter. “Good riddance. Iran has murdered more than a thousand Americans. Their EFP land mines were the deadliest in Iraq. Anti-Semitism is an evil I detest, and we surely don’t want it in our government.”
An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, voiced admiration for Kent’s decision, saying he has been a consistent anti-war voice on the right for years. “Everybody is tired of this s***,” that official said of the Iran war. Kent, that official added, has been “treated like a second-class citizen” in the administration because of his strong association with Gabbard.
Kent had spent recent months focused heavily on the US military withdrawal from Syria, a move that already was underway but has reduced the number of US military positions the Pentagon must defend as Iran and proxy forces now launch attacks across the region.
Gabbard is due to testify on Wednesday and Thursday at annual worldwide threat briefings to Congress, with other top US intelligence officials.
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