President Donald Trump’s director of the National Counterterrorism Center resigned Tuesday, saying he could not support the ongoing conflict against Iran because the country “posed no imminent threat to our nation.”
Joe Kent, a retired Green Beret and the President’s principal counterterrorism adviser, posted his resignation letter on X and made it effective immediately. He is the highest-ranking administration official to quit over the conflict that began after U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities last June.
After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.
I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this… pic.twitter.com/prtu86DpEr
— Joe Kent (@joekent16jan19) March 17, 2026
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Kent wrote. “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.”
Kent accused high-ranking Israeli officials and some in the American media of running a misinformation campaign that undermined Trump’s “America First” platform and pushed the U.S. into war.
Kent told the President he had understood before the strikes that Middle East wars were “a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation.”
Kent, whose wife Shannon was killed by a suicide bomber in Syria in 2019, “in a war manufactured by Israel,” urged Trump to change course.“You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos,” he wrote. “You hold the cards.”
Kent, who served nearly two decades in the Army with a dozen combat deployments and later as a CIA paramilitary officer, was nominated in February 2025 and confirmed by the Senate last July. He previously served as chief of staff to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
The White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s response rejected many of Kent’s claims as “false,” defending evidence of Iran’s threat, and stating that as “someone who actually witnesses President Trump’s decision-making process on a daily basis, I can attest to the fact that he is always looking to do what’s in the best interest of the United States of America — period. America First.”
There are many false claims in this letter but let me address one specifically: that "Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation."
This is the same false claim that Democrats and some in the liberal media have been repeating over and over.
As President Trump has clearly and… https://t.co/AC8M5L8lye— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) March 17, 2026
