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Top U.S. counterterrorism official resigns over Iran war, says there was no imminent threat
Joe Kent, the director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, announced his resignation on Tuesday, citing his concerns about the justification for military strikes in Iran and saying he “cannot in good conscience” back the Trump administration’s war.
www.ctvnews.ca
Top U.S. counterterrorism official resigns over Iran war, says there was no imminent threat
WASHINGTON — Joe Kent, the director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, announced his resignation on Tuesday, citing his concerns about the justification for military strikes in Iran and saying he “cannot in good conscience” back the Trump administration’s war.
“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 said in a statement posted on social media, making claims U.S. President Donald Trump has denied.
Kent, a former Green Beret and political candidate with connections to right-wing extremists, was confirmed last July on a 52-44 vote. As head of the National Counterterrorism Center, he was in charge of an agency tasked with analyzing and detecting terrorist threats.
His resignation demonstrates that the unease about the war within Trump’s base extends to at least one senior member of his Republican administration.
The leadership change at one of the nation’s top counterterrorism offices comes at a time of heightened concern about terrorism following recent attacks at a Michigan synagogue and a Virginia university.
Kent’s decision came down to the reasoning behind the strikes on Iran, he wrote in his resignation letter.
Trump has offered shifting reasons for the strikes and has pushed back on claims that Israel forced the U.S. to act. House Speaker Mike Johnson has suggested the White House believed Israel was determined to strike on its own, leaving the Republican president with a “very difficult decision.”
Speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said he always thought Kent was “weak on security” and if someone in his administration did not believe Iran was a threat, “we don’t want those people.”
“They’re not smart people, or they’re not savvy people,” Trump said. “Iran was a tremendous threat.”
A year ago, in nominating Kent, Trump praised him as a man who had “hunted down terrorists and criminals his entire adult life.”
A spokesperson for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard did not immediately respond to questions about Kent’s resignation or Gabbard’s views on the strikes.
Democrats strongly opposed Kent’s confirmation because of his past ties to far-right figures and conspiracy theories. But following his resignation, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Kent’s concerns about the war in Iran were justified.
“I strongly disagree with many of the positions he has espoused over the years, particularly those that risk politicizing our intelligence community,” Warner said. “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.”
Johnson, though, pushed back on Kent’s claims at a press conference on Tuesday.
“I got all the briefings. We all understood that there was clearly an imminent threat that Iran was very close to the enrichment of nuclear capability and they were building missiles at a pace no one in the region could keep up with,” Johnson said.
Johnson said he is convinced that if Trump had waited “we would have mass casualties of Americans, service members and others, and our installation would have been dramatically damaged.”
