Joe Kent, top US counterterrorism official, resigns over Iran war

Top US counterterrorism official resigns over Iran war, urging Trump to ‘reverse course’

Donald Trump’s top counterterrorism official has resigned over the Iran war, urging the president to “turn back the clock.”

In a letter published on

The White House rejected the letter, saying the president had “compelling evidence” that Iran was going to attack the United States first. A US hate monitor accused Kent of “anti-Semitic tropes”.

With his departure, Kent is the most high-profile figure in the Trump administration to publicly criticize the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran.

In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said Kent was a “nice guy” but “weak on security.”

He also said Kent’s resignation letter made him realize “it was a good thing he was out.”

In the letter to Trump, Kent claimed that “high-ranking Israeli officials” and influential American journalists had sowed “disinformation” that led the president to undermine his “America First” agenda.

“This echo chamber was used to make you believe that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States,” the letter continued. “It was a lie.”

Kent, a longtime Trump supporter who ran unsuccessfully for Congress twice, was nominated by the president early in his administration and narrowly confirmed to the post.

During his confirmation hearings, Kent refused to back down from claims that federal agents instigated the January 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, or that Trump was not defeated in the 2020 election.

Democrats had criticized the hiring of a member of the far-right Proud Boys party as a consultant for its 2022 election bid.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a US anti-Semitism watchdog, said in a statement that the accusations in Kent’s resignation letter “traffic in old-age anti-Semitic tropes.”

“It is therefore not surprising that he accuses Israel and the media of pushing the president into war against the Iranian regime,” the ADL said.

The pro-Israel lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), republished the ADL’s statement on X. Aipac did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the BBC.

Ilan Goldenberg, a senior official at the liberal pro-Israel group J Street, described Kent’s letter as “an ugly thing that plays on the worst anti-Semitic tropes.”

Kent, 45, is a U.S. Special Forces and CIA veteran whose wife, Navy cryptology technician Shannon Kent, was killed in a suicide bombing in Syria in 2019.

The father of two has been deployed overseas 11 times with the U.S. military, including with U.S. Army Special Forces in Iraq.

He then became a paramilitary officer in the CIA, before leaving public service after the death of his wife.

Kent cited his military service and his wife’s death in his letter, saying he “cannot support sending the next generation to fight and die in a war that does not benefit the American people and does not justify the cost of American lives.”

At the National Counterterrorism Center, Kent reported to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and oversaw the analysis and detection of potential terrorist threats from around the world.

After Kent resigned Tuesday, Gabbard supported Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran.

In a statement published on X, she said that as commander in chief, the president had the responsibility to determine what did and did not constitute an imminent threat.

She noted that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was responsible for helping provide the president with “the best available information to inform his decisions.”

“After carefully considering all the information available to him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion,” Gabbard wrote on X.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Kent’s suggestion that “Trump made the decision based on the influence of others, even foreign countries, is both insulting and laughable.”

“As President Trump has clearly and explicitly stated, he had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first,” she added.

The political reaction has been mixed.

Mitch McConnell, the former Senate Republican, posted on X: “Isolationists and anti-Semites have no place in either party, and certainly do not deserve a place of trust in our government.”

But former Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene — a former Trump supporter — spoke out in support of Kent, calling him an American hero.

She posted on X: “They are going to lie about Joe Kent and try to discredit him. Don’t believe the lies!”

There have been a number of resignations among senior Trump administration officials, including Margaret Ryan, director of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Richard Grenell, director of the Kennedy Center.

President Trump’s second term, however, saw far fewer changes than his previous term in the White House between 2017 and 2021.