The director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center resigned on Tuesday, citing his objection to the Iran war and claiming that Israel tricked the United States into entering.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Joe Kent wrote in his resignation letter, which he addressed to President Donald Trump and shared on social media. “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 continued, “Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.”
He also accused Israel of having also drawn the United States into the Iraq War in the 2000s and said he had lost his wife, who died in a 2019 suicide bombing in Syria linked to ISIS, “in a war manufactured by Israel.”
Kent, who has past connections to the far-right influencer Nick Fuentes, is the first senior Trump official to resign over the war. His words reflect a deepening and conspiratorial anti-Israel sentiment on the right, where the two-week old U.S.-Israel war on Iran is fracturing Trump’s MAGA coalition.
“Joe Kent is an American hero, patriot and veteran,” the far-right personality Candace Owens wrote on X. Buckley Carlson, Tucker Carlson’s son who works for Vice President JD Vance, also tweeted that Kent was an “American hero.”
Trump, however, said he was glad Kent had resigned, while a White House spokeswoman said there were “many false claims” in Kent’s letter.
And Jewish leaders across the political spectrum condemned the letter, with some saying that even principled opposition to the Iran war could not justify its antisemitic tropes.
A general view of the destruction at the Shohadan-e Esmaeili Sports Complex, which was targeted by the US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran. The complex located in district 18 of Tehran was one of the well-equipped and active sports facilities in western Tehran. (Stringer/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Polls show that most Americans oppose the war, which has sparked a global fuel crisis and appears to threaten the economy more broadly. And some of Kent’s allegations appeared to echo what even some senior Trump administration officials have suggested: that Israeli officials manipulated Trump into believing both that Iran was a present danger to the United States, and that there was a swift path to victory.
But he went further, saying that the dynamic reflected “the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women.” And he blamed Israel for a personal tragedy, too.
A former U.S. Representative from Washington state, Kent was nominated by Trump to be the counterterrorism center’s director last year. Kent was previously a Libertarian and a Democrat before shifting his party to the GOP in 2021 and backing Trump.
Kent is also a U.S. Army Green Beret and combat veteran who fought in the Iraq War, including in the Battle of Fallujah. He has credited the catalyst for his backing of Trump and belated opposition to the War on Terror to the death of his wife Shannon Smith, a military cryptologist, in a 2019 suicide bombing in the northern Syrian city of Manbij.
At the time, the bombing was connected to the first Trump administration’s campaign against ISIS. But in Kent’s telling now, the ISIS fight, too, could be chalked up to Israeli misinformation.
“As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I 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,” Kent wrote in his letter.
To veteran Middle East policy experts, Kent’s framing of Israel as the secret manipulators of recent global conflicts are a blend of nonsensical and dangerous.
“It strips away any sense of agency on the part of the United States, all of these charges,” Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former State Department negotiator on Arab-Israeli relations, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “And it reposits that agency in the form of a clever, willful Israeli prime minister who somehow manipulates America into going to war.”
Miller said that Trump was capable of entering a disastrous war on his own, “wanting to make history” by ending America’s decades-long tensions with Iran and assassinating its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Netanyahu may be affecting the timetable of the war, but not the war itself,” he theorized.
Kent’s allegations about Israel having “manufactured” the Iraq War and the Syrian civil war, Miller said, had no basis in fact.
“As to Iraq, there was a little event called 9/11,” he said. “Syrian civil war, I have no idea what he’s talking about.” The framing, he said, reminded him of decades of hearing from various partners in his line of work that the U.S. Congress was “Israeli-occupied territory.”
In his letter, Kent does not blame Trump for the war, instead urging the president to rethink his approach.
“I pray that you will reflect on what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for,” he concludes his letter. “The time for bold action is now. You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos. You hold the cards.”
The White House rejected Kent’s claims. “As President Trump has clearly and explicitly stated, he had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in a statement.
Leavitt added that Trump “ultimately made the determination” to strike Iran in “a joint attack with Israel,” and called the charge that Israel manipulated the president “absurd.”
Asked about Kent directly at the White House, Trump said, “I always thought he was a nice guy but I always thought he was weak on security.”
He added, “It’s a good thing that he’s out because he said Iran was not a threat. Every country recognized what a threat Iran was.”
Israelis, including an army reservist heading to his unit, take cover in a reinforced train station during an Iranian missile attack on March 17, 2026 in Hod Hasharon in central Israel. Iran has continued firing waves of drones and missiles at Israel after the United States and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran early on February 28th. (David Silverman/Getty Images)
But Kent was celebrated for resigning by figures on both the left and right, with the loudest voices coming from the fringe.
In addition to Buckley Carlson and Owens, who called the war “Bibi’s Red Heifer War,” other avatars of the far right praised Kent. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former congresswoman, called him “a GREAT AMERICAN HERO.”
Some more liberal and centrist voices were also approving of Kent, without referencing his antisemitism.
“I didn’t support Kent’s nomination. Yet I’m glad he is willing to acknowledge the truth – there was NO imminent threat to the United States, and this war was a terrible idea,” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, a Jewish Democrat and vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote on X.
“Have talked a lot of shit about Joe Kent over the years (deserved) and can’t speak to all of his motivations here but I gotta say its pretty refreshing to see that someone in the administration has a red line on something,” Tim Miller, an analyst on the liberal-leaning MS Now network and an editor of the anti-Trump publication The Bulwark, wrote on X.
Meanwhile, both Trump allies — including far-right Jewish influencer Laura Loomer — and Jewish liberals and conservatives denounced Kent.
“Good riddance,” tweeted GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska. “Iran has murdered more than a thousand Americans. Their EFP land mines were the deadliest in Iraq. Anti-Semitism is an evil I detest, and we surely don’t want it in our government.”
Jewish Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer, of New Jersey, also denounced Kent, writing, “Kent’s reduction of Iran to ‘Israel’s fault’ isn’t leadership, it’s bigoted deflection.”
“Of course Kent’s own post announcing his resignation is riddled with antisemitic tropes under the guise of blaming Israel,” Amy Spitalnick, head of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, wrote on X. “You can vehemently criticize the Israeli government & oppose the war without engaging in dangerous conspiratorial tropes.”
“You can resign and ostensibly make it about Iran, but scapegoating Israel and its ‘powerful American lobby’ for Trump’s decision to go to war puts Jews in danger,” Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, wrote on X.
A statement from Brian Romick, head of Democratic Majority for Israel, similarly called Kent’s letter “deeply antisemitic” and added, “It is deeply alarming that a man holding one of the most sensitive national security positions in the United States government harbors these antisemitic views.” Romick also said Trump “made the decision to use military force against Iran.”
“There is no place in public service for traffickers of antisemitic tropes such as Mr. Kent,” the Combat Antisemitism Movement, which has supported war with Iran, said in a statement. “For generations to come, the world will be a safer place as a direct result of the decisive military actions that have been taken by the U.S. and Israel.”
Prior to his confirmation as national counterterrorism director, Kent served for a time as acting chief of staff to U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. In that role, he was included in the 2025 “Signalgate” group chats in which highly sensitive planning of bombings in Yemen were mistakenly sent to a journalist. Gabbard, who also oversees the center Kent led, is expected to testify before Congress this week.
Kent has also had past associations with Fuentes, whom he admitted to calling in 2022 to having called to discuss electoral strategy for his House bid that year — though he disavowed Fuentes. Kent’s wife, Heather Kaiser, has contributed to The Grayzone, a site founded by anti-Zionist Jewish writer Max Blumenthal.
Kent has also spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and defended Jan. 6 rioters. While running for congress in 2022, Kent also talked to pro-Israel lobbyists AIPAC for support, according to a policy paper shared by a Jewish Insider reporter.
In that paper, Kent states, “The United States and Israel share common enemies in the Middle East, from terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah to the totalitarian government of Iran,” later adding that he would “bolster the coalition that stands in opposition to Iran.”
Kent concluded, “Further, I will introduce legislation to strip the most vile antisemites in Congress from their committee assignments.”
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