‘Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation’: Trump-appointed intelligence official resigns over Iran war
CNN
By Zachary Cohen, CNN
(CNN) — A senior US intelligence official appointed by President Donald Trump abruptly announced he is stepping down from his post on Tuesday, citing misgivings about the administration’s war with Iran.
Joe Kent, who had been serving as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, posted his resignation letter on X, contradicting the administration’s basis for launching the war and imploring Trump to end it.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Kent wrote in the letter. “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.”
The resignation is the highest-profile rebuke yet of the war effort from a Trump administration insider and staunch support of the MAGA movement, albeit one who instantly drew criticism for alleged antisemitism. It reflects how the conflict is roiling some of Trump’s most high-profile MAGA supporters, like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, even though rank-and-file Republicans largely back the president.
It also renews questions, which the administration has long struggled to answer, about why the US launched the effort in the first place. Some lawmakers and experts have raised doubts over the intelligence the president used to justify the war, and Kent’s account gives them fresh reason to criticize Trump’s move.
A senior US official confirmed that Kent was resigning.
Trump said Tuesday that it’s a “good thing” Kent resigned over his objections to the war with Iran, deriding him as “very weak on security.”
“When somebody is working with us that says they didn’t think Iran was a threat, we don’t want those people,” Trump said from the Oval Office. “They’re not smart people, or they’re not savvy people.”
The Office of Director of National Intelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
After the initial wave of strikes against Iran, Trump cited an “imminent threat” to the US, and administration officials said the US acted in response to potential preemptive attacks by Iran on forces in the region — claims that were contradicted in Pentagon briefings to Capitol Hill, where defense officials said Iran was not planning to attack unless struck first.
Kent blamed Israeli officials and the media for misleading Trump about the threat posed by Iran.
“This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to victory,” he wrote in his resignation letter. “This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women. We cannot make this mistake again.”
Kent has faced criticism in the past for associations with far-right figures, including White nationalists and a Nazi sympathizer.
Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, posted on social media applauding Kent’s resignation.
“Good riddance,” he wrote. “Anti-Semitism is an evil I detest, and we surely don’t want it in our government.”
Trump’s rationale for attacking the Iranian regime has whipsawed from protecting the demonstrators who protested in the streets of Iran in January to defending the US against the risk of Iran building nuclear and long-range weapons and eliminating a regime that’s backed terrorist groups’ killing Americans for decades. He’s called for the Iranian people to take control of their country even as top officials say the war is not about regime change.
Divides over the war
The Iran war and the close US alliance with Israel have divided the MAGA movement. Some prominent figures in the movement, including Kelly and Carlson, have been critical of the Trump administration on both counts. The critical camp also includes influential podcasting voices such as Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Tim Dillon, who were credited with helping fuel Trump’s 2024 victory but have since soured on the president over foreign policy and other issues.
But polls show that most rank-and-file Republicans back the war effort. An NBC News poll taken after the conflict started found 77% of Republicans — and 90% of self-described MAGA Republicans — supported the strikes on Iran. The same survey found that 69% of Republicans said their sympathies lay more with Israelis than with Palestinians, though it also found that the percentage of Republicans that view Israel positively was at 54% — down from 63% in 2023.
The top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Mark Warner, issued a statement critical of Kent but supportive of the reasoning behind his resignation.
“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.”
The White House and some of Trump’s allies, meanwhile, sought to cast Kent as being uninvolved in intelligence briefings on the conflict and potentially on the way out.
But that account was disputed by others.
A senior Trump administration official said that the White House had previously sidelined Kent from participating in the president’s intelligence briefings, including those related to Iran. The official said the White House had told Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to fire Kent, a Trump appointee, before he announced his resignation. “But she never did,” the official said.
A senior US intelligence official acknowledged that Kent was not part of the administration’s planning discussions or briefings related to Iran. It is likely Kent had access to Iran intelligence in other ways through his job. But the official disputed that Gabbard was asked to fire him, adding that she would have if that had been the case.
Efforts to reach Kent were not immediately successful.
Kent served in a key intelligence position
Kent is leaving a crucial role at an organization tasked with monitoring intelligence associated with long-existing terrorist organizations in the Middle East as well as drug cartels and international gangs. Before taking on the position he served as a top aide to Gabbard.
Kent earned his top position in part by being a vocal proponent of Trump’s 2020 election conspiracies. But Kent’s penchant for conspiracies led to clashes with other administration officials since taking office.
Last year Kent drew a rebuke from FBI Director Kash Patel and other Justice Department officials after he sought to access FBI systems to investigate the Charlie Kirk assassination, pursuing claims that there could have been foreign involvement in the killing, according to people briefed on the discussions.
Patel and other officials raised concerns that accessing FBI evidence could damage the prosecution of Tyler Robinson, the Utah man charged in the Kirk assassination, those briefed said.
Kent has extensive experience in counterterrorism and the military — he served 11 combat tours over a 20-year career in the Army before retiring to become a CIA officer — and has personal experience as a Gold Star spouse. His first wife, Shannon, was killed in a 2019 suicide bombing in Syria while serving as a Navy cryptologist.
Kent’s past connections with far-right figures
Kent ran an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2022, during which past associations with far-right figures became a key issue.
Kent repeatedly had to disavow past interactions with Nazi sympathizer Greyson Arnold and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes as CNN’s KFile has previously reported. Kent said at the time he was unfamiliar with Fuentes and later said he did not want Fuentes’ endorsement.
During Kent’s confirmation hearing, he faced criticism from Democratic lawmakers who pointed to those past associations.
Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, described him at the time as a “conspiracy theorist who espouses white supremacist views and is patently unqualified for this important role in just about every way imaginable.” He was confirmed in a 52-44 vote in the Senate.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
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CNN’s Michael Williams, Evan Perez, Andrew Kaczynski, Em Steck, Alayna Treene, Sean Lyngaas and Adam Cancryn contributed to this report.
