Joe Kent, the former U.S. Army special forces soldier and CIA operator turned National Counterterrorism Center director, has resigned from his post over President Donald Trump’s decision to take the U.S. to war with Iran.
Kent announced the move in a post on X, writing he could not “in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran” because Iran “no imminent threat to our nation.”
He added that it was “clear” that the U.S. war on Iran had been started “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
In an accompanying resignation letter addressed to Trump, Kent accused “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” of having “deployed a misinformation campaign” to undermine Trump’s policies and “ encourage a war with Iran.”
He told Trump that an “echo chamber” had been used to “deceive” him into believing Iran had been an “imminent threat” to the U.S. and that attacking would lead to a “clear path to a swift victory.”
“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,” he said.
Kent referenced his history as a combat veteran — and as a widower whose Navy cryptanalyst wife had been killed in an ISIS bombing in Syria — while stating that 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,” though he did so with the use of further antisemitic tropes by suggesting that the U.S. and NATO campaign against ISIS had been “manufactured by Israel.”
Continuing to address Trump directly, Kent continued: “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.
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Source: independent.co.uk