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The director of the US National Counterterrorism Center has resigned in protest at the Iran war, saying Tehran posed “no imminent threat to our nation”.
The statement by Joe Kent, an army veteran who previously served as an adviser under director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, marks the first high-profile defection from Donald Trump’s administration since the war began on February 28.
In his resignation letter to Trump, posted on X, Kent wrote 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 also wrote that Washington launched the conflict “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.
The National Counterterrorism Center was created under George W Bush to co-ordinate the work of law enforcement and intelligence agencies after their failure to prevent the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks. Kent had served as its director since July, after several months as a top adviser to Gabbard.
A veteran of the US wars in the Middle East, Kent has been an outspoken critic of extended American military entanglements overseas. His resignation is likely to raise questions about Gabbard, who was closely aligned with Kent, but also about splits within the wider Maga movement, which has long been critical of US military adventurism.
Gabbard, who is also a military veteran, is a longtime critic of US efforts at regime change and state building overseas. During the first Trump administration, she was highly critical of US escalation with Iran. In 2019, Gabbard released a video warning the “US must not go to war with Iran”.
In his resignation letter Kent claimed that senior Israeli officials and influential voices in the American media had created an “echo chamber” to “deceive” Trump into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat.
The claims prompted accusations of antisemitism from Kent’s critics. Ilan Goldenberg, a former senior adviser to then vice-president Kamala Harris, said in a post on X that claims by Kent that Israel was to blame for the Iraq war and had deceived Trump into launching the conflict “is ugly stuff that plays on the worst antisemitic tropes”.
Heath Mayo, founder of grassroots conservative group Principles First, said: “Before holding this guy up as some paragon of principle, recall this is the same man who flunked his congressional bid for his outspoken antisemitism, his ties to Nick Fuentes, and his insistence that the 2020 election was rigged.”
Kent unsuccessfully ran for a congressional seat in Washington state in 2022 and 2024, but was edged out each time in tight races by Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a moderate Democrat.
His past contacts with members of the far-right, including white nationalists Fuentes and Greyson Arnold came to the fore during the campaign. Kent disavowed his interactions with the pair.
Kent also claimed to have support from Peter Thiel, the technology executive and Republican donor close to US vice-president JD Vance.
In remarks at the White House on Tuesday, Trump described Kent as “very weak on security”. He added: “It’s a good thing that he’s out, because he said that Iran was not a threat — Iran was a threat in every country.”
But Trump’s critics on the right hailed Kent’s decision. “Joe Kent is a GREAT AMERICAN HERO. God bless him and protect him!,” former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X.
Meanwhile, Democrats quickly seized on Kent’s resignation to criticise Trump’s decision to launch the war against Iran.
“I strongly disagree with many of the positions he has espoused over the years, particularly those that risk politicizing our intelligence community,” Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said in a statement.
“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.”
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt accused Kent of making “false claims” in his resignation letter. “The absurd allegation that President Trump made this decision based on the influence of others, even foreign countries, is both insulting and laughable.”
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment.