Johnson refutes Joe Kent on Iran: ‘There was clearly an imminent threat’

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Tuesday refuted former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent’s assertion that Iran posted no imminent threat to the U.S. before President Trump ordered strikes on the country.

“I’m on the Gang of Eight. I got all the briefings. We all understood there was clearly an imminent threat,” Johnson said in a press conference, referring to the classified briefings provided to top Congressional leaders.

“I don’t know where Joe Kent is getting his information, but he wasn’t in those briefings, clearly,” Johnson said.

Other top Democrats who were in those Gang of Eight briefings, however, have disagreed with Johnson and said they were not presented evidence that the U.S. was under threat of an imminent attack from Iran.

The Speaker was asked about Kent’s resignation from his role within the office of Director of National Intelligence about an hour after the resignation letter was posted online, in which Kent also said that the U.S. “started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Johnson said the idea that the U.S. is putting foreign interests above the domestic interest is “clearly wrong.”

“Iran was building up ballistic missiles at such a rapid pace that we knew that their plan was to fire them upon Americans. The commander in chief and his administration had a very difficult decision to make,” Johnson said.

“Had the president waited, I am personally convinced that we would have mass casualties of Americans, service members and others, and our installations would have been dramatically damaged,” Johnson said.

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