Joe Kent, Trump’s National Counterterrorism Center Director, Resigns Over Iran War

Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned Tuesday over objections to the war in Iran. He’s the first senior Trump administration official to do so.

“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, a top adviser to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, wrote in his resignation letter.

In the letter, Kent wrote that he supported the anti-intervention foreign policy agenda that President Donald Trump campaigned on in each bid for the White House, but that the president shifted his thinking last summer.

“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,” he wrote.

Kent, who formerly served in the Army Special Forces and as a CIA officer, deployed to Iraq in 2003 and served 11 combat tours. His wife, Shannon Smith, was killed in a suicide bombing in Syria in 2019.

Before joining the Trump administration, Kent unsuccessfully ran for Congress twice in 2022 and 2024. Both his congressional bids and his appointment to lead the counterterrorism center were mired in controversy around Kent’s associations with white nationalist groups.

He said he first decided to run for Congress after his representative, former Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Kent has repeatedly spread conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 attack. He lost both times to Democrat Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.

Trump nominated Kent to lead the National Counterterrorism Center in 2025. The Senate voted 52-44 along party lines to confirm him.