A Top Counterterror Official Quits Over Iran War

One of Washington's most senior counterterrorism officials is walking away from the Trump administration—and blaming the war with Iran and Israel's sway over US policy on his way out, reports the New York Times. Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced his resignation Tuesday in a social media post:

• "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." He called it "an honor serving" President Trump and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

In a resignation letter to Trump, Kent accused Israeli officials and a powerful pro-Israel lobby of pushing the US into the conflict and waging a "misinformation campaign" that undermined Trump's "America First" agenda. A veteran of 11 combat deployments in Iraq and elsewhere, Kent said arguments for striking Iran echo the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion. He also invoked his late wife, Shannon, a military cryptologist killed in Syria, writing that he would not back "sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people." Kent, a close adviser to Gabbard, had been a leading internal advocate for a more restrained US foreign policy.