Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center under President Trump, announced his resignation on Tuesday, expressing his opposition to the U.S. decision to engage in war with Iran. Kent’s departure comes amid his belief that Iran did not pose an immediate threat to the United States, making the conflict unjustified.

Nominated by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate the previous year, Kent made his resignation public via a letter posted on X, explaining his stance against sending young Americans into a war that offers no clear benefit to the nation. “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,” he stated.

In his resignation letter, Kent expressed his inability to support the ongoing military actions in Iran, emphasizing that the initiation of the conflict was influenced by external pressures, particularly from Israel and its influential American lobby. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation,” he wrote, “and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

He is the highest-ranking Trump administration official to announce his resignation over the Iran war. 

Kent said that before last June, which is when the U.S. and Israel struck Iran’s nuclear facilities, the president “understood that 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 knows the cost of war personally — his wife, Shannon, was killed by suicide bomber in Syria in 2019, leaving behind two boys. 

He went on to accuse Israeli officials and some in the media of orchestrating a deception that led Mr. Trump into the war: 

Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran. This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory. This was a lie and is the same tactics the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost the nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women.

“You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos,” he told the president. “You hold the cards.” 

As director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Kent led U.S. counterterrorism and counternarcotics efforts and was the president’s principal counterterrorism adviser. 

A retired Green Beret veteran, Kent was confirmed in July 2025, after Mr. Trump nominated him to the post in February 2025. 

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.