On Tuesday, March 17, the National Counterterrorism Center Director, Joe Kent, wrote a scathing resignation letter to President Trump. In the letter, Kent explains that the reason he is leaving his position is because of foreign influences’ involvement in Trump’s decision to start a war with Iran.
Kent has been a loyal supporter of Trump since his first administration, including through his loss of the 2020 election and the following January 6 insurrection. He was appointed by Trump as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center in February 2025. So why would a longtime Trump supporter suddenly leave his position in the administration?
Kent’s resignation letter outlines potential plots to “trick” Trump and the US into waging war on Iran. He writes in his letter, “It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.
The letter continues, “Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined [Trump’s] American First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran”.
“This echo chamber was used to deceive [Trump] into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States… This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw [the US] into the disastrous Iraq war…We cannot make this mistake again,” Kent’s letter warns.
In the most clear way he can, without getting into legal trouble or releasing classified information, Kent attempts to contradict the lies of this administration. Trump was clearly not pleased with the message in Kent’s letter, as Karoline Leavitt quickly attacked Kent’s claims in a social media post, saying that the idea that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation” is a Democratic lie and claiming Trump had irrefutable evidence.
However, literally days earlier, on March 12, her post in response to an ABC news article about potential Iranian attacks in California, stated verbatim, “TO BE CLEAR: No such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did”.
While everyone should take all information from people involved in Trump’s administration with a huge grain of salt, Kent’s letter may actually have had some truth to it.
On Sunday, March 15, 2026, Iran’s secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, posted a shocking message on the social media platform Twitter/X. His post, translated from Farsi, read, “It has been reported that what remains of Epstein’s network is working to prepare a conspiracy aimed at fabricating an incident similar to the September 11 attacks, in preparation for accusing Iran of being behind it. The Islamic Republic of Iran categorically rejects such plots and terrorist operations on principle, and does not wage war against the American people”.
Larijani was then killed two days later, on March 17, by an Israeli airstrike; the same day that Kent resigned. I am not saying that Larijani was by any means a “good guy,” but his message seems to indicate that, at least to him, it was clear that it is not the American people who are attacking Iran; it is Trump and his administration.
Why does this matter? Well, if Trump were going to look for a peaceful resolution to his war, which he claims that he wants, Larijani would have been the person to speak to.
