MAGA split emerges in Trump's base as Joe Kent resigns over Iran war
The head of the US National Counterterrorism Center’s departure is the latest sign of waning influence among the administration’s anti-war MAGA figures amid the conflict with Iran.
WASHINGTON — The United States’ top intelligence director for counterterrorism announced his resignation on Tuesday, citing objections to the Trump administration’s involvement in the ongoing war with Iran.
Joe Kent’s resignation as the head of the US National Counterterrorism Center, which falls under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, marked the first by a Senate-confirmed US official in protest during Trump’s second term.
After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.
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… pic.twitter.com/prtu86DpEr— Joe Kent (@joekent16jan19) March 17, 2026
Who is Kent: A US Army Special Forces veteran and former CIA paramilitary officer, Kent emerged as a prominent voice in right-wing, pro-Trump media circles in 2021, before launching two failed runs for Congress in 2022 and 2024 as a Republican from the state of Washington.
His nomination to lead the nation’s top intelligence office by Trump last year compounded concerns among some Democratic lawmakers about the potential politicization of intelligence being delivered to the president. Kent at times has promoted conspiracy theories about the FBI’s involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
As a former Green Beret and Army Ranger with 11 combat tours, Kent became a leading voice within MAGA circles in recent years against what Trump and others have decried as the “endless wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His first wife, Shannon — a language specialist with the US Navy — was killed in a suicide bombing while visiting a local restaurant with her teammates in the Kurdish-controlled town of Manbij, Syria, in 2019, during the US-led campaign to defeat the Islamic State group.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Kent wrote in his public resignation letter, which he posted on the social media site X on Tuesday.
“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.
Addressing Trump directly, Kent said the president “understood better than any modern president how to decisively apply military power without getting us drawn into never-ending wars. You demonstrated this by killing Qasem Soleimani and by defeating ISIS.”
Why it matters: Kent's departure marks the most visible sign of the wanining influence of anti-war, isolationist voices within Trump’s administration.
Kent's boss, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, another once-vocal opponent of US involvement in wars in the Middle East, was reportedly excluded from high-level meetings on intelligence regarding Iran's nuclear enrichment program.
Gabbard's office concluded in March 2025 that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, a finding Trump later publicly dismissed.
Several hours after Kent’s resignation, Gabbard released a statement on X saying, “The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is responsible for helping coordinate and integrate all intelligence to provide the President and Commander in Chief with the best information available to inform his decisions."
She added, “After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion.”
Kent went on in the letter to allege that “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that … sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.”
“This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us in the disastrous Iraq war,” Kent wrote, before going on to state that his wife had been killed “in a war manufactured by Israel” in an ostensible reference to Syria’s civil war.
Ilan Goldberg, senior vice president at the liberal, pro-Israel advocacy group J Street, condemned the antisemitic tropes in Kent’s resignation.
“Almost always happy to have senior officials resigning over a war I disagree with,” Goldberg wrote in a post on X. “But the anti-Semitic stuff in here blaming Israel for the Iraq war and a secret conspiracy of the media and Israelis to deceive Trump into going to war with Iran is ugly stuff,” he added.
Almost always happy to have senior officials resigning over a war I disagree with. But the antisemitic stuff in here blaming Israel for the Iraq war and a secret conspiracy of the media and Israelis to deceive Trump into going to war with Iran is ugly stuff that plays on the… https://t.co/shaWvUPZSJ
— Ilan Goldenberg (@ilangoldenberg) March 17, 2026
Know more: Asked by a reporter about Kent’s resignation during a press gaggle inside the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump replied, “I always thought he was a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security.”
“When I read his statement, I realized that it’s a good thing that he’s out, because he said that Iran was not a threat. Iran was a threat. Every country realized that,” Trump said alongside Ireland’s taoiseach, Micheal Martin.
