Donald Trump’s top counterterrorism official has walked out — and he hasn’t gone quietly. Joe Kent, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, posted an open letter to X on Tuesday accusing the administration of starting a war based on a lie, and calling on the president to change course.
In the letter, Kent was direct. Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States, he wrote. The decision to go to war, he alleged, came from pressure applied by Israel and its influence within American media and political circles — an “echo chamber,” he called it, built to deceive the president into believing a threat existed that didn’t. “This was a lie,” he wrote plainly.
The White House pushed back immediately. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called Kent’s suggestion that foreign influence drove Trump’s decision “both insulting and laughable,” insisting the president had acted on strong, compelling evidence that Iran was planning to strike first. Trump himself, speaking from the Oval Office, called Kent a “nice guy” but “weak on security,” adding that reading the letter had confirmed for him that Kent’s departure was for the best.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, to whom Kent reported, also backed the president. In a statement on X, she said Trump had carefully reviewed all available intelligence before concluding that Iran posed an imminent threat, and had acted accordingly.
Kent’s letter, however, drew sharp criticism from other quarters too — not just the White House. The Anti-Defamation League said his accusations “traffic in old-age antisemitic tropes,” and the pro-Israel lobbying group Aipac amplified that statement. Ilan Goldenberg of the liberal pro-Israel group J Street called the letter “ugly stuff that plays on the worst antisemitic tropes.”
Kent, 45, is a decorated special forces and CIA veteran who deployed eleven times overseas, including with US Army special forces in Iraq. His wife, Navy Cryptologic Technician Shannon Kent, was killed in a suicide bombing in Syria in 2019. He left government service after her death, before returning under Trump. He referenced both his military record and her death in the resignation letter, writing that he “cannot 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.”
He was a long-time Trump supporter who ran for Congress twice without success before being nominated to his role early in the administration. His confirmation had been contentious — Democrats raised concerns over his ties to far-right groups, including his hiring of a Proud Boys member as a consultant during his 2022 campaign. At his hearings, he also refused to distance himself from claims that federal agents had provoked the January 6 Capitol riots, or that Trump had lost the 2020 election.
Tucker Carlson, a close personal friend, came to his defence in a brief interview with the New York Times. “Joe is the bravest man I know, and he can’t be dismissed as a nut,” Carlson said, noting that Kent was giving up access to the highest levels of intelligence and knew exactly what that would cost him. “The neocons will try to destroy him for that. He understands that and did it anyway.”
Kent is now the most senior figure within the Trump administration to publicly break ranks over Iran. Other resignations have followed in recent months — including SEC enforcement director Margaret Ryan and Kennedy Center head Ric Grenell — though Trump’s second term has seen considerably less internal turnover overall than his first.
