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Joe Kent Resigns From Trump Administration, Citing No Imminent Iranian Threat
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Joseph “Joe” Kent, a senior official in the Trump administration and director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced his resignation on Tuesday, March 17, 2026, saying he could not support the war in the Middle East. In a resignation letter addressed to President Donald Trump and shared on X, Kent wrote that "Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation" and said it was "clear that we launched this war under the pressure of Israel and its powerful American lobby."
Kent breaks with Trump
Joseph “Joe” Kent, a senior official in the Trump administration and director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced his resignation on Tuesday, March 17, 2026, saying he could not support the war in the Middle East. In a resignation letter addressed to President Donald Trump and shared on X, Kent wrote that "Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation" and said it was "clear that we launched this war under the pressure of Israel and its powerful American lobby."
Kent also accused "senior Israeli officials and influential members of the American media" of leading a "disinformation campaign" that fed a "bellicose climate favorable to a war." The break drew a response from Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who said, "On this point, [Joseph Kent] was right; there was no credible evidence of an imminent Iranian threat that justified rushing the United States into a new war in the Middle East."
Gillon warns of chaos
Carmi Gillon, the former head of Shin Bet, warned that "A dark future awaits Israel" and said that if Israel adopts the Trump plan it will trigger a right-wing messianic ideology that will provoke chaos. Gillon told Haaretz that "Jewish terrorists are no longer on the fringe," and he predicted a scenario in which Shin Bet security action would follow a horrific terrorist attack against the Dormition Abbey in the Old City of Jerusalem.
He argued that the Israeli public has mistaken extremists for "wild weeds" and said that when Jewish clandestinity was discovered following anti-Palestinian violent attacks in the 1980s there were 12,000 settlers in the territories, but now there are 500,000. Gillon also warned that "Netanyahu has mortgaged the State, the dignity of the State, and democracy" and said a majority of 61 seats in the Knesset would pave the way to the "French Law" granting the Prime Minister immunity from prosecution.
Legal threat over violence
A leaked letter seen by The Guardian says dozens of Israelis from the country’s security, political and cultural elite threatened legal action over support for Jewish terrorism and an "ideology of ethnic cleansing" in the occupied West Bank. The signatories issued a "final warning" demanding immediate action to "eradicate Jewish terrorism," and the letter said they would petition Israel’s high court if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence and security ministers and security commanders did not condemn and stop the violence.
The Guardian reported that the letter accused Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners of enabling attacks on Palestinians to further an extremist agenda of ethnic cleansing and annexation, and it said the campaign of extreme violence violated Israeli and international law. The letter also stated that "Since 2020, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 1,100 Palestinian civilians" in the occupied West Bank, "at least a quarter of whom were children," and it said no one has been charged over any of these deaths.