US’s top counterterror chief quits with damning statement on Iran war

The director of the National Counterterrorism Centre has resigned and said he ‘cannot in good conscience’ back the war in Iran.

Joe Kent said on social media that 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 former political candidate with connections to right-wing extremists, was confirmed to his post last July on a 52-44 vote.

As head of the National Counterterrorism Centre, he was in charge of an agency tasked with analysing and detecting terrorist threats.

In his statement, Kent alleged that ‘high-ranking Israeli officials’ had sown misinformation in the US, which led to Trump undermining his ‘America First’ promise.

‘This echo was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States. This was a lie,’ he wrote.

‘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.

He added: ‘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’s resignation comes days after a former senior aide to Donald Trump told Metro that the President is in a ‘vulnerable position’ with his war in Iran – and doesn’t know how to get out of it.

Since the US launched joint strikes in Iran with Israel more than two weeks ago, the oil industry has been thrown into chaos, neighbouring countries have been struck with missiles, and 13 US soldiers have been killed.

When the conflict began, only 41% of Americans approved of the intervention – far lower than support for any other US conflict in decades.

John Robert Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor from 2018 to 2019, told Metro that there is a strong case for regime change in Iran, but Trump hasn’t made this clear to the American public – something which could come back to haunt him.

Ambassador Bolton told Metro that while Iran was not considered an ‘imminent threat’, its nuclear programme was getting ‘too close for comfort’.

‘People say this is a “war of choice.” It is. It’s a preventive war to prevent the need to do something else in much more dangerous circumstances,’ he explained.

Referring to the US’ Iraq War in 2003, he added: ‘By the late 1990s, Saddam didn’t have centrifuges spinning, but he had kept together approximately 3,000 scientists and technicians who could rebuild the program.

‘That was the point: they have the knowledge. Iran may not have centrifuges spinning today, but they know how to put them back together.’

When a country is ‘seeking weapons of mass destruction and engaging in international terrorism while suppressing its own people’, it’s a problem, he added.