Joe Kent has resigned as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center in protest of President Donald Trump’s ongoing war against Iran. Kent, a twice-failed Washington congressional candidate aligned with the isolationist MAGA right, is the highest-ranking Trump official to quit because of the war.

But Kent didn’t portray the president as the real villain in the lengthy resignation letter that he posted on X on Tuesday. That distinction goes to Israel and its supporters in the United States. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation,” Kent wrote, “and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Kent went on to argue that in the letter “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” launched a “misinformation campaign” early in Trump’s current term that undermined his America First agenda. Writing directly to Trump, Kent argued that this “echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States.” He added the Israelis had used the same approach to “draw us into the disastrous Iraq war.”

Trump, of course, is the president of the United States and commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in the world—not some hapless victim of Israeli deception. He willingly joined Israel to initiate the current war, despite the apparent reservations of some of his senior advisers. It was his responsibility to determine what was in the best interests of the United States, and he failed spectacularly in that task.

It is certainly true that Israel played a major role in pushing Trump towards war. Netanyahu has wanted the United States to attack Iran for decades, and he finally........

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