U.S. Counterterror Chief Quits Over Iran Struggle. Says Trump Deceived by Israel Foyer, Media Propaganda

Joe Kent, President Trump’s top counterterrorism advisor, quit his post today because of the war the United States is waging on Iran at the behest of Israel. 

In his resignation letter, Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told Trump that Israel and its “powerful lobby” pushed Trump to attack Iran, which did not pose an “imminent threat” to the United States.

The usual chickenhawk neoconservatives who don’t fight the wars they advocate attacked Kent. So also did Trump, as is his custom when someone disagrees with him. Kent is a “weak” man, Trump said of the former Green Beret, and anyone who opposes war with Iran, he continued, is not smart.

Kent Quits

“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. 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 wrote:

I support the values and the foreign policies that you campaigned on in 2016, 2020, 2024, which you enacted in your first term. Until June of 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation.

In your first administration, you understood better than any modern President how to decisively apply military power without getting us drawn into never-ending wars. You demonstrated this by killing Qasam Solamani and by defeating ISIS.

That all changed when Trump began his second term, Kent wrote. Early on, “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.”

That “echo chamber was used to deceive” Trump “into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory.”

Kent called those claims from the pro-war lobby a “lie” and “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.”

“We cannot make this mistake again,” Kent wrote.

Kent reminded Trump that he deployed 11 times for combat missions, and is a “a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel.” Kent’s wife was killed in a suicide bombing.

“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,” he wrote.

Attack Kent

As he did with GOP Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky and former GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Trump attacked Kent for sticking to America First principles.

“I always thought he was weak on security,” Trump told reporters:

Very weak on security.… It’s a good thing that he’s out because he said that Iran was not a threat? Iran was a threat, every country realized what a threat Iran was. 

Trump said the “greatest military scholars” backed his decision to attack Iran:

When somebody is working with us that says they didn’t think Iran was a threat, we don’t want those people.… They’re not smart people, or they’re not savvy people. Iran was a tremendous threat.

“This stuff is brain rot,” neoconservative chickenhawk Ben Shapiro wrote of Kent’s letter. “His ideology is the same as that of Tucker Carlson, the guy who says that the war is disgusting and evil and who has been busy sexting with the mullahs.”

Another chickenhawk, radio talker Mark Levin, thinks “DOJ should open a criminal investigation to determine if Kent leaked any classified information.”

As well, Levin wrote on X, Kent is “the SOB who leaked my meeting last year with POTUS to Qatarlson?” meaning Tucker Carlson. “And Gabbard didn’t fire him?” Levin presented no evidence that Kent disclosed Levin’s meeting with Trump.