Donald Trump’s top counterterrorism official has resigned over the war in Iran, urging the president to “reverse course”.
In a letter posted on X, National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent said that Iran posed “no imminent threat” to the US and claimed the administration “started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.
The White House dismissed the letter, saying the president had “compelling evidence” that Iran was going to attack the US first. A US hate monitor accused Kent of “antisemitic tropes”.
With his departure, Kent is the most high-profile figure within the Trump administration to publicly criticise the US-Israeli attack on Iran.
In the letter addressed to Trump, Kent alleged that “high-ranking Israeli officials” and influential US journalists had sown “misinformation” that led the president to undermine his “America First” platform.
“This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States,” the letter continued. “This was a lie.”
Kent, a long-time Trump supporter who unsuccessfully ran for Congress twice, was nominated by the president early in his administration and narrowly confirmed to his post.
In his confirmation hearings, Kent refused to renounce claims that federal agents had fomented the January 2021 riot at the US Capitol, or that Trump had not been defeated in the 2020 election.
Democrats had criticised his hiring of a member of the far-right Proud Boys as a consultant to his 2022 election bid.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a US antisemitism monitor, said in a statement that accusations in Kent’s resignation letter “traffic in old-age antisemitic tropes”.
“So it’s no surprise that he would blame Israel and the media for pushing the President into war against the Iranian regime,” the ADL said.
The pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), reposted the ADL statement on X. Aipac did not immediately respond to a BBC request for comment.
