The First Big Administration Defection Over Iran
Joe Kent, the U.S. government’s top counterterrorism official and a self-identified “America First” Republican, is not the only Donald Trump ally to disagree with the president’s decision to attack Iran. But today he became the first senior government official to do so publicly, quitting his job and offering an explanation that undercut Trump’s rationale for starting the war. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation,” Kent wrote in his resignation letter, an extraordinary statement from an official who has had access to some of the most highly classified intelligence in the U.S. government. Trump has said the exact opposite—that Iran was about to use a nuclear weapon, and that its missiles “could soon” reach the United States. These claims are not supported by earlier U.S. intelligence assessments, and Kent’s letter suggested that nothing has changed. The resignation seemed to take many officials in Washington by surprise. Kent isn’t a particularly influential member of Trump’s national-security team, but he is closely allied with his boss, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, who has long …
