War

Joe Kent Is the First Iran War Crack in the Trump Admin

The top intelligence official resigned because there was no “imminent threat” from Iran and blamed Israel for starting the war.

Matthew Petti | 3.18.2026 3:35 PM

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The MAGA split over the Middle East has often been much ado about nothing. Although the second Trump administration began with staffing fights between hawks and doves—and acrimonious debates about Israel in conservative media—President Donald Trump held onto his coalition through a small war in Yemen and a one-off attack in Iran.

That changed on Tuesday afternoon when Joe Kent, head of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned over the current war in Iran, which the U.S. and Israel launched jointly last month. "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 his resignation letter, which he shared publicly.

It might have been possible to dismiss Trump's previous interventions as more careful than the adventures of "dumb presidents" in the past, as Vice President J.D. Vance did last year. But this war........

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