Joe Kent, Trump’s National Counterterrorism Center Director, Resigns Over Iran War

Kent, a Trump supporter who spread Jan. 6 conspiracy theories, said he “cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.”

Joe Kent

Joe Kent has resigned from the Trump administration over the war in Iran. Jenny Kane/AP

Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned Tuesday over objections to the war in Iran. He’s the first senior Trump administration official to do so.

“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 top adviser to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, wrote in his resignation letter.

In the letter, Kent wrote that he supported the anti-intervention foreign policy agenda that President Donald Trump campaigned on in each bid for the White House, but that the president shifted his thinking last summer.