Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned his post Tuesday in response to the war in Iran, which he argued was unjustified.

“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 wrote in a post on X announcing his resignation, effective the same day. “As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, 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.”

Kent concluded by urging President Donald Trump to “reflect upon what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for.”
Kent’s resignation is another signal of the ongoing struggles Trump is having with consolidating domestic support for the Iran war. The administration has made a number of statements that commentators have interpreted as showing that the motivating cause of the war was Israel. This week, Trump told reporters “You could make the case that maybe we shouldn’t even be there at all… It’s almost like we do it for habit—but we also do it for some very good allies that we have in the Middle East.”