WASHINGTON (Diya TV) — Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned on March 17, 2026, becoming the first senior Trump administration official to resign in protest over the Iran war. Kent, nominated by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate last year, posted his resignation letter on X Tuesday morning, saying he “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 was born on April 11, 1980, in Sweet Home, Oregon. He joined the Army at age 17, rising to the rank of Chief Warrant Officer in the Green Berets. He received six Bronze Stars for his 11 combat tours in Iraq, Yemen, and North Africa. After his military career, he served as a CIA officer before entering politics, running an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2022. Trump nominated Kent as director of the National Counterterrorism Center in February 2025, and the Senate confirmed him to the position in July 2025 in a 52-44 vote, without Democratic support. 

In his resignation letter, Kent argued that the administration had been misled into war. He wrote that “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign” that undermined Trump’s America First platform and encouraged war with Iran, calling it “the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war.” Kent’s letter also carried a personal dimension. His first wife, Shannon Smith, was a Navy cryptologist killed by a suicide bomber in 2019 while fighting the Islamic State group in Syria. He referenced her death directly, writing that she had been killed in a war “manufactured by Israel,” and said he could not send the next generation to fight in a similar conflict.

According to two White House officials, Kent met with Vice President JD Vance on Monday, laying out why he intended to step down. Vance and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard were in the room, and Vance encouraged Kent to speak with Chief of Staff Susie Wiles before formally submitting his resignation, which he did before making his public statement.

The White House pushed back sharply. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump “had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first” and called Kent’s claims about Israel’s influence on Trump “both insulting and laughable.” Trump, when asked about the resignation during a meeting with the Irish prime minister, was dismissive. Trump told reporters that he “always thought he was weak on security” and that “it’s a good thing that he’s out, because he said Iran was not a threat.”

Reactions were divided along lines that cut across party and ideological boundaries. Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner said Kent “never should have been confirmed,” but added: “on this point, he is right — there was no credible evidence of an imminent threat from Iran that would justify rushing the United States into another war of choice.” House Speaker Mike Johnson took the opposite view. “I got all the briefings. We all understood there was clearly an imminent threat,” Johnson told reporters. “I don’t know where Joe Kent is getting his information, but he wasn’t in those briefings, clearly.”

The resignation drew particular attention because of its anticipated fallout — Trumpworld braced for an expected Tucker Carlson interview with Kent, with three sources inside and outside the administration telling Axios that Carlson, one of the most vocal right-wing critics of the war and of Israel, was likely to give Kent a major platform.

Kent’s departure also cast a spotlight on Gabbard, who had long been a vocal opponent of military intervention in Iran. In a 2020 fundraising video titled “Trump’s Path To War With Iran,” Gabbard had gone step by step through Trump’s escalating actions in the Middle East and argued the country must stop Trump from starting a war with Iran.Following Kent’s resignation, Gabbard did not directly comment on him, and she did not explicitly endorse the view that the U.S. faced an imminent threat from Iran, writing only that Trump is “responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, Kent had been sidelined from the team responsible for producing and delivering the President’s Daily Brief in the final months of his tenure — suggesting his relationship with the administration had grown strained well before the public resignation. The administration moved quickly to contain the fallout, with officials emphasizing that Kent had not been involved in the Iran briefings and that his views did not reflect the intelligence community’s assessment.