Top US Counterterrorism Chief Resigns Over Iran War Policy

A top counterterrorism official in the United States, Joe Kent, has resigned over his country’s war against Iran.

He shared a copy of his resignation letter on the social media platform X on Tuesday.

Addressing his correspondence to US President Donald Trump, he wrote: “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Kent wrote.

“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.”

Until this week, Kent served as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the agency responsible for coordinating and analysing terrorism intelligence.

The resignation marks the highest-profile rebuke yet of the war effort from within the Trump administration.

Kent said he was concerned about the risk of another major war in the Middle East. In his resignation letter, Kent explained that he supported the foreign policy agenda Trump championed during his last three presidential campaigns.

Kent wrote that Trump had pledged to keep the US out of “never-ending wars”, like those that had unfolded in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Until June 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,” Kent wrote.

But he said that Trump had been misled about the threat posed by Iran. He blamed members of the media, as well as high-ranking Israeli officials and lobbyists, for prompting Trump to abandon his America First agenda. “This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that if you struck now, there was a clear path to a swift victory,” Kent said.

“This was a lie and is 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.”