US counterterrorism chief quits over Iran war, calls Israel a war monger

The director of the United States National Counterterrorism Center, Joseph Kent, has resigned in protest over the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, delivering a pointed rebuke to President Donald Trump in a letter made public on Tuesday.

 

“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Kent wrote, reports Muslim Network TV.

 

“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, a combat veteran who deployed 11 times and describes himself as a Gold Star husband who lost his wife Shannon in what he calls “a war manufactured by Israel,” said he could not support sending another generation of Americans “to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people.”

 

In the letter, Kent invoked Trump’s own pre-war foreign policy positions, arguing the conflict represented a betrayal of the America First platform Trump had championed across three presidential campaigns.

 

He praised Trump’s first-term restraint, citing the killing of Qasem Soleimani and the defeat of ISIS as examples of decisive military action that avoided open-ended conflict.

 

Kent alleged that a coordinated influence campaign by senior Israeli officials and elements of the American media had deceived the administration into believing Iran posed an imminent threat, drawing a direct comparison to the lead-up to the Iraq War.

 

“This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war,” he wrote, “that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women.”

 

He closed with a direct appeal to the president to reverse course, warning that the current path leads toward “decline and chaos.”

 

“You hold the cards,” Kent wrote.