Joseph Kent resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center on Tuesday, becoming the first and most senior Trump administration official to quit over the war in Iran, declaring in an open letter to the president that Tehran posed no imminent threat to the United States and that the war had been started under pressure from Israel and its domestic lobbying network — a direct repudiation of the administration’s legal and strategic justification for Operation Epic Fury from a man confirmed by the Senate less than nine months ago.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. 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 a resignation letter posted on X, effective immediately. “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.”
Kent, a Special Forces combat veteran who deployed eleven times, framed his decision in personal as well as political terms. His wife Shannon, a US Army intelligence officer, was killed in a terrorist attack in Manbij, Syria in January 2019. He described himself in the letter as “a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel.” He said he could not 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.”
The letter directly addressed Trump, urging him to reverse course.
“I support the values and the foreign policies that you campaigned on in 2016, 2020, 2024, which you enacted in your first term. I pray that you will reflect upon what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for. The time for bold action is now. You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos. You hold the cards.”
Kent was confirmed to his post last July on a 52-44 Senate vote. As head of the NCTC, he held responsibility for analyzing and integrating terrorism-related intelligence from across the US government, serving as the analytical bridge between the CIA, FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security on threat assessments. The center’s director reports through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is headed by Tulsi Gabbard. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The ODNI also did not immediately respond. Intelligence officials were described by two sources as having been caught off guard by the news.
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Kent is close with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who has kept an unusually low public profile since the Iran war began. Gabbard has not issued any public statements on the conflict and has only appeared publicly during the dignified transfer ceremony for American service members killed during the conflict with Iran. She has not appeared alongside Hegseth or other administration officials in any of the war briefings.
Kent’s resignation now focuses direct attention on Gabbard’s own position: whether the nation’s top intelligence official shares her former aide’s assessment that the war lacked a valid imminent-threat predicate, and whether she intends to remain in her post.
The legal dimension of Kent’s argument is not without foundation. Under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, the President has authority to introduce armed forces into hostilities without a formal declaration of war if there is a national emergency created by an attack on the United States, its territories, or its armed forces. Absent such a triggering condition, the resolution requires congressional authorization within sixty days or the forces must be withdrawn. The administration has not formally articulated a legal basis under the resolution for Operation Epic Fury, and Senate Democrats — as well as a small number of Republicans in the national-populist wing of the party — have questioned both the legal authority and the strategic rationale. Kent’s letter uses the phrase “imminent threat” advisedly: it is the threshold language embedded in Department of Justice and administration legal precedents for pre-emptive military action, and his assertion that it was not met is a direct challenge to whatever internal legal justification was used to authorize the strikes.
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The resignation is particularly resonant within the segment of Trump’s political coalition that identifies as “America First” and has historically opposed what it characterizes as neoconservative military interventionism driven by foreign policy interests. Kent was twice endorsed by Trump in congressional campaigns in Washington state, and his public profile has been built largely in that political space. His framing of the war as Israeli-driven overrides the populist-nationalist framework that many in that movement claim to prioritize — a critique that could resonate beyond Washington in the states where Trump’s non-interventionist messaging was most effective in 2024.
The White House has also not publicly acknowledged the resignation. Trump, speaking from the East Room earlier on Tuesday, said that the war in Iran was continuing and that “all of Iran’s military has been obliterated,” language that signals no change in course regardless of the institutional dissent that Kent’s departure now publicly represents.
Kent is the eighteenth Trump administration official to resign or be fired since the current term began in January 2025, but the first to depart specifically over the Iran war, and the first to frame their resignation explicitly around a stated disagreement with what they described as an illegal or unjustified use of military force.
No successor to Kent at the National Counterterrorism Center has been named. The center’s career senior staff are expected to continue operations without interruption.