The Trump administration's top counterterrorism official, Joe Kent, announced his resignation Tuesday over opposition to the Iran war, becoming the highest-profile administration official to step down publicly over the conflict.
In a resignation letter posted publicly on social media, Kent said he could not "in good conscience" support the war, now in its third week.
"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, who served as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, wrote.
President Donald Trump, in the several justifications he's given for starting the war on Iran, has repeatedly said Tehran posed an "imminent threat" to the U.S. and that the U.S. was "very nearly under threat."
Early on in the conflict, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. strikes were triggered in part because the U.S. knew Israel was going to attack Iran and that Iran would retaliate against the U.S., but that Israel didn't force Trump's hand. Trump also denied Israel pulled the U.S. into the war, saying, "If anything, I might have forced Israel's hand."
Trump on Tuesday reacted to Kent's letter while taking questions at a bilateral meeting with Ireland's Taoiseach Micheál Martin in the Oval Office.
"Well, I read his statement. I always thought he was a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security, very weak on security," Trump said. "I didn't know him well, but I thought he seemed like a pretty nice guy."
"But when I read a statement, I realized that it's a good thing that he's out," Trump added. "Because he said that Iran was not a threat. Iran was a threat. Every country realized what a threat Iran was. The question is whether or not they wanted to do something about it. And many people, many of the greatest military scholars, are saying for years that [the] president should have taken out Iran because they wanted a nuclear weapon."
In a lengthy statement on X, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt forcefully rejected Kent's claim that Iran posed "no imminent threat" to the United States, calling it "the same false claim that Democrats and some in the liberal media have been repeating over and over."
Leavitt said Trump had "strong and compelling evidence" that Iran was preparing to attack the U.S. first and argued that the decision to strike was based on intelligence from "many sources and factors."
The White House press secretary also pushed back on Kent's suggestion that Trump was pressured by Israel or other voices into the conflict, an "absurd allegation" and that it was "insulting and laughable."
ABC News has reached out to several Israeli officials for comment.
The National Counterterrorism Center is housed within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, led by Tulsi Gabbard.
Gabbard on Tuesday publicly backed Trump's authority to determine what constitutes an imminent threat on the war.
"As our Commander in Chief, he is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat, and whether or not to take action he deems necessary to protect the safety and security of our troops, the American people and our country," Gabbard wrote on X.
Gabbard stopped short of directly addressing Kent's resignation, or Kent by name.
"The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is responsible for helping coordinate and integrate all intelligence to provide the President and Commander in Chief with the best information available to inform his decisions," she said.
"After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion," Gabbard added.
ODNI says Kent oversaw the U.S. counterterrorism and counternarcotics enterprise and, according to his biography, he served as the principal counterterrorism adviser to the president.
Kent is a combat veteran who served more than 20 years in the U.S. Army and completed 11 combat deployments in the Middle East.
Before joining the Trump administration, he ran two unsuccessful campaigns for Congress. During his 2022 congressional run, Kent faced backlash over his associations with far-right figures, including Nick Fuentes. In social media posts at the time, Kent said he did not want Fuentes' endorsement and later wrote that he did not want "Fuentes's endorsement due his focus on race/religion" and that Fuentes' message was "not my message of inclusive populism."
Several Jewish groups condemned Kent's remarks in his resignation letter, calling them "antisemitic tropes."
In a post to X, the Anti-Defamation League said, "ADL opposed Joe Kent’s nomination to run NCTC because of his history of antisemitism and extremism. So it’s no surprise that he would blame Israel and the media for pushing the President into war against the Iranian regime. These accusations traffic in old-age antisemitic tropes. And, as we have seen over the past few weeks, they aren’t just slanderous -- they’re potentially dangerous.
Kent also drew scrutiny for remarks about Jan. 6, 2021, and for appearing at a 2021 "Justice for J6" rally, where he defended the constitutional rights of those arrested and warned against what he described as the erosion of due process.
Kent was confirmed as director of the National Counterterrorism Center in a narrow 52-44 vote in the Senate last July.
Kent invoked a deeply personal loss in explaining his decision to step down: he is a Gold Star husband whose late wife, Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent, was killed in action during a suicide bombing while serving in Syria in 2019.
In his resignation letter, Kent wrote, "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."
Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he strongly disagreed with some of Kent's views over the years 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."
"Ignoring the facts to pursue a predetermined war puts American lives at risk and undermines our national security," Warner said in a statement. "The United States cannot be led into conflict on the basis of politics, impulse, or a president's desire for confrontation. We have seen where this road leads before."
House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed back on Kent's assessment of the U.S. operation against Iran, saying he is "clearly wrong."
"I'm on the Gang of Eight. I got all the briefings. We all understood there was clearly an imminent threat that Iran was very close to the enrichment nuclear capability, and they were building missiles at a pace that no one in the region could keep up with," Johnson told reporters at a news conference.
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he thanked Kent for his service and his family's sacrifice, but rejected Kent's argument that Iran posed no imminent threat, calling it a "misguided assessment."
Cotton said "Iran's vast missile arsenal and support for terrorism posed a grave and growing threat to America. Indeed, the ayatollahs have maimed and killed thousands of Americans. President Trump recognized this threat and made the right call to eliminate it."