The director of the U.S. Nationwide Counterterrorism Middle resigned on Tuesday, citing his objection to the Iran warfare and claiming that Israel tricked the US into getting into.
“I can’t in good conscience help the continuing warfare in Iran,” Joe Kent wrote in his resignation letter, which he addressed to President Donald Trump and shared on social media. “Iran posed no imminent risk to our nation, and it’s clear that we began this warfare because of stress from Israel and its highly effective American foyer.”
Kent continued, “Early on this administration, high-ranking Israeli officers and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation marketing campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a warfare with Iran.”
He additionally accused Israel of getting additionally drawn the US into the Iraq Struggle within the 2000s and mentioned he had misplaced his spouse, who died in a 2019 suicide bombing in Syria linked to ISIS, “in a warfare manufactured by Israel.”
Kent, who has previous connections to the far-right influencer Nick Fuentes, is the primary senior Trump official to resign over the warfare. His phrases replicate a deepening and conspiratorial anti-Israel sentiment on the correct, the place the two-week previous U.S.-Israel warfare on Iran is fracturing Trump’s MAGA coalition.
“Joe Kent is an American hero, patriot and veteran,” the far-right persona Candace Owens wrote on X. Buckley Carlson, Tucker Carlson’s son who works for Vice President JD Vance, additionally tweeted that Kent was an “American hero.”
Trump, nonetheless, mentioned he was glad Kent had resigned, whereas a White Home spokeswoman mentioned there have been “many false claims” in Kent’s letter.
And Jewish leaders throughout the political spectrum condemned the letter, with some saying that even principled opposition to the Iran warfare couldn’t justify its antisemitic tropes.
A normal view of the destruction on the Shohadan-e Esmaeili Sports activities Advanced, which was focused by the US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran. The advanced situated in district 18 of Tehran was one of many well-equipped and energetic sports activities services in western Tehran. (Stringer/image alliance through Getty Photographs)
Polls present that the majority People oppose the warfare, which has sparked a worldwide gasoline disaster and seems to threaten the economic system extra broadly. And a few of Kent’s allegations appeared to echo what even some senior Trump administration officers have instructed: that Israeli officers manipulated Trump into believing each that Iran was a gift hazard to the US, and that there was a swift path to victory.
However he went additional, saying that the dynamic mirrored “the identical tactic the Israelis used to attract us into the disastrous Iraq warfare that value our nation the lives of 1000’s of our greatest women and men.” And he blamed Israel for a private tragedy, too.
A former U.S. Consultant from Washington state, Kent was nominated by Trump to be the counterterrorism middle’s director final yr. Kent was beforehand a Libertarian and a Democrat earlier than shifting his social gathering to the GOP in 2021 and backing Trump.
Kent can also be a U.S. Military Inexperienced Beret and fight veteran who fought within the Iraq Struggle, together with within the Battle of Fallujah. He has credited the catalyst for his backing of Trump and belated opposition to the Struggle on Terror to the dying of his spouse Shannon Smith, a navy cryptologist, in a 2019 suicide bombing within the northern Syrian metropolis of Manbij.
On the time, the bombing was linked to the primary Trump administration’s marketing campaign in opposition to ISIS. However in Kent’s telling now, the ISIS struggle, too, might be chalked as much as Israeli misinformation.
“As a veteran who deployed to fight 11 occasions and as a Gold Star husband who misplaced my beloved spouse Shannon in a warfare manufactured by Israel, I can’t help sending the subsequent era off to struggle and die in a warfare that serves no profit to the American individuals nor justifies the price of American lives,” Kent wrote in his letter.
To veteran Center East coverage consultants, Kent’s framing of Israel as the key manipulators of latest world conflicts are a mix of nonsensical and harmful.
“It strips away any sense of company on the a part of the US, all of those costs,” Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow on the Carnegie Endowment for Worldwide Peace and former State Division negotiator on Arab-Israeli relations, informed the Jewish Telegraphic Company. “And it reposits that company within the type of a intelligent, willful Israeli prime minister who someway manipulates America into going to warfare.”
Miller mentioned that Trump was able to getting into a disastrous warfare on his personal, “eager to make historical past” by ending America’s decades-long tensions with Iran and assassinating its chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Netanyahu could also be affecting the timetable of the warfare, however not the warfare itself,” he theorized.
Kent’s allegations about Israel having “manufactured” the Iraq Struggle and the Syrian civil warfare, Miller mentioned, had no foundation in reality.
“As to Iraq, there was somewhat occasion known as 9/11,” he mentioned. “Syrian civil warfare, I do not know what he’s speaking about.” The framing, he mentioned, reminded him of many years of listening to from varied companions in his line of labor that the U.S. Congress was “Israeli-occupied territory.”
In his letter, Kent doesn’t blame Trump for the warfare, as a substitute urging the president to rethink his method.
“I pray that you’ll replicate on what we’re doing in Iran, and who we’re doing it for,” he concludes his letter. “The time for daring motion is now. You’ll be able to reverse course and chart a brand new path for our nation, or you may enable us to slide additional towards decline and chaos. You maintain the playing cards.”
The White Home rejected Kent’s claims. “As President Trump has clearly and explicitly said, he had robust and compelling proof that Iran was going to assault the US first,” White Home Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in an announcement.
Leavitt added that Trump “finally made the willpower” to strike Iran in “a joint assault with Israel,” and known as the cost that Israel manipulated the president “absurd.”
Requested about Kent immediately on the White Home, Trump mentioned, “I at all times thought he was a pleasant man however I at all times thought he was weak on safety.”
He added, “It’s a great factor that he’s out as a result of he mentioned Iran was not a risk. Each nation acknowledged what a risk Iran was.”
Israelis, together with a military reservist heading to his unit, take cowl in a strengthened prepare station throughout an Iranian missile assault on March 17, 2026 in Hod Hasharon in central Israel. Iran has continued firing waves of drones and missiles at Israel after the US and Israel launched a joint assault on Iran early on February twenty eighth. (David Silverman/Getty Photographs)
However Kent was celebrated for resigning by figures on each the left and proper, with the loudest voices coming from the perimeter.
Along with Buckley Carlson and Owens, who known as the warfare “Bibi’s Crimson Heifer Struggle,” different avatars of the far proper praised Kent. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the previous congresswoman, known as him “a GREAT AMERICAN HERO.”
Some extra liberal and centrist voices have been additionally approving of Kent, with out referencing his antisemitism.
“I didn’t help Kent’s nomination. But I’m glad he’s keen to acknowledge the reality – there was NO imminent risk to the US, and this warfare was a horrible thought,” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, a Jewish Democrat and vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote on X.
“Have talked quite a lot of shit about Joe Kent through the years (deserved) and may’t communicate to all of his motivations right here however I gotta say its fairly refreshing to see that somebody within the administration has a pink line on one thing,” Tim Miller, an analyst on the liberal-leaning MS Now community and an editor of the anti-Trump publication The Bulwark, wrote on X.
In the meantime, each Trump allies — together with far-right Jewish influencer Laura Loomer — and Jewish liberals and conservatives denounced Kent.
“Good riddance,” tweeted GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska. “Iran has murdered greater than a thousand People. Their EFP land mines have been the deadliest in Iraq. Anti-Semitism is an evil I detest, and we certainly don’t need it in our authorities.”
Jewish Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer, of New Jersey, additionally denounced Kent, writing, “Kent’s discount of Iran to ‘Israel’s fault’ isn’t management, it’s bigoted deflection.”
“After all Kent’s personal put up saying his resignation is riddled with antisemitic tropes beneath the guise of blaming Israel,” Amy Spitalnick, head of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, wrote on X. “You’ll be able to vehemently criticize the Israeli authorities & oppose the warfare with out participating in harmful conspiratorial tropes.”
“You’ll be able to resign and ostensibly make it about Iran, however scapegoating Israel and its ‘highly effective American foyer’ for Trump’s resolution to go to warfare places Jews at risk,” Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, wrote on X.
A assertion from Brian Romick, head of Democratic Majority for Israel, equally known as Kent’s letter “deeply antisemitic” and added, “It’s deeply alarming {that a} man holding probably the most delicate nationwide safety positions in the US authorities harbors these antisemitic views.” Romick additionally mentioned Trump “made the choice to make use of navy pressure in opposition to Iran.”
“There isn’t any place in public service for traffickers of antisemitic tropes corresponding to Mr. Kent,” the Fight Antisemitism Motion, which has supported warfare with Iran, mentioned in an announcement. “For generations to return, the world shall be a safer place as a direct results of the decisive navy actions which have been taken by the U.S. and Israel.”
Previous to his affirmation as nationwide counterterrorism director, Kent served for a time as performing chief of employees to U.S. Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. In that position, he was included within the 2025 “Signalgate” group chats wherein extremely delicate planning of bombings in Yemen have been mistakenly despatched to a journalist. Gabbard, who additionally oversees the middle Kent led, is predicted to testify earlier than Congress this week.
Kent has additionally had previous associations with Fuentes, whom he admitted to calling in 2022 to having known as to debate electoral technique for his Home bid that yr — although he disavowed Fuentes. Kent’s spouse, Heather Kaiser, has contributed to The Grayzone, a website based by anti-Zionist Jewish author Max Blumenthal.
Kent has additionally unfold conspiracy theories in regards to the 2020 election and defended Jan. 6 rioters. Whereas operating for congress in 2022, Kent additionally talked to pro-Israel lobbyists AIPAC for help, based on a coverage paper shared by a Jewish Insider reporter.
In that paper, Kent states, “The US and Israel share widespread enemies within the Center East, from terrorist teams like Hamas and Hezbollah to the totalitarian authorities of Iran,” later including that he would “bolster the coalition that stands in opposition to Iran.”
Kent concluded, “Additional, I’ll introduce laws to strip essentially the most vile antisemites in Congress from their committee assignments.”
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