U.S. counterterrorism director Joe Kent resigns over Iran war

“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war,” Kent said in a letter addressed to President Donald Trump, that was posted on Kent’s personal X account.

Kent, a promoter of far-right conspiracy theories whom the Senate narrowly confirmed for the director role last July, accused the president of being deceived by Israel into supporting the war.

“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 in his letter.

Trump disputed Kent’s claims later Tuesday.

“I always thought he was a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office during a bilateral meeting with Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin.

After reading Kent’s statement, “I realized that it’s a good thing that he’s out,” Trump said, because “every country realized what a threat Iran was.”

The comments came shortly after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an X post that Kent was parroting “the same false claim that Democrats and some in the liberal media have been repeating over and over.”

Trump “had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first,” and he “would never make the decision to deploy military assets against a foreign adversary in a vacuum,” Leavitt said.

She also called Kent’s claims about Israel’s influence on Trump “both insulting and laughable.”

The National Counterterrorism Center did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

The director of the NCTC leads U.S. counterterrorism and counternarcotics efforts and advises the president directly. An hour after Kent announced his resignation, he was still listed as the center’s director on its official government website.

The NCTC is housed within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, led by Tulsi Gabbard, a once-vocal opponent of war with Iran who has kept quiet on the Trump administration’s latest military actions. Gabbard was scheduled to testify Tuesday before the House Intelligence Committee, but the hearing was postponed until Thursday.

The ODNI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kent, 45, is a U.S. Army veteran and former CIA paramilitary officer who was deployed to the Middle East 11 times over 20 years, according to his official bio. His first wife, U.S. Navy officer Shannon Kent, was killed by a suicide bomber in 2019 while deployed to Syria.

Joe Kent ran for Congress in Washington as a Republican in 2022 and 2024, losing both races to Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. He later served as Gabbard’s acting chief of staff.

Trump nominated Kent to lead the NCTC in February 2025, saying he will “help us keep America safe by eradicating all terrorism, from the jihadists around the World, to the cartels in our backyard.”

Kent has echoed Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” and suggested that the FBI was involved in planning and directing the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

During his April 2025 nomination hearing in the Senate, Kent said the U.S. intelligence community is investigating the FBI’s role in the riot.

Kent’s resignation announcement Tuesday morning drew divisive reactions. Opponents of the war, including both Democrats and some who have identified with Trump’s MAGA movement, praised Kent.

“Joe Kent’s record is deeply troubling, and in my view he never should have been confirmed to lead the National Counterterrorism Center,” Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., said in a statement. “But on this point, he is right: there was no credible evidence of an imminent threat from Iran that would justify rushing the United States into another war of choice in the Middle East.”

But Trump’s allies pushed back on Kent’s assertion that Iran posed no imminent threat to the U.S.

“I got all the briefings. We all understood there was clearly an imminent threat that Iran was very close to the enrichment of nuclear capability,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters on Capitol Hill.

“I don’t know where Joe Kent is getting his information, but he wasn’t in those briefings, clearly,” Johnson said.

Others attacked Kent in personal terms.

“Joe Kent is a crazed egomaniac who was often at the center of national security leaks, while rarely (never?) producing any actual work,” Taylor Budowich, Trump’s former deputy White House chief of staff and a political consultant, said in an X post.

“This isn’t some principled resignation — he just wanted to make a splash before getting canned. What a loser,” Budowich said.

—Emily Wilkins contributed to this report.