A top counterterrorism official who quit in a very public show of protest over Donald Trump’s war on Iran has spilled his secrets.
Joe Kent, who quit as the National Counterterrorism Center director over Trump’s war on Tuesday, appeared on Tucker Carlson’s podcast on Wednesday.
“It became really clear to me, you know, over the weekend, this past weekend, that our message just wasn’t getting through,” Kent explained of his decision to Carlson.
The 45-year-old, who is the first senior member of the Trump administration to leave his post as a result of the war, went against Trump’s narrative in his interview, claiming that Iran was not on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon.
He dismissed Trump’s repeated claim that Iran was close to building a nuclear bomb, which threatens the U.S. and allies in the Middle East, and claimed that a “good deal of key decision makers were not allowed to come and express their opinion” to the president.
Trump, 79, announced the U.S and Israel military strikes on Iran through an eight-minute social media video posted on Feb. 28. “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime,” Trump said. “They’ve rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore.”
“No. They weren’t three weeks ago when this started, and they weren’t in June either,” Kent said, dismissing Trump’s earlier claim that the U.S. had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear regime.
Kent added, “I mean, the Iranians have had a religious ruling of fatwa against actually developing a nuclear weapon since 2004. That’s available in the public sphere, but then also we had no intelligence to indicate that fatwa was being disobeyed or it was on the cusp of being lifted.”
“There was no intelligence that said, hey, on whatever day it was, March 1st, the Iranians are going to launch this big sneak attack, they’re going to do some kind of a 9/11, Pearl Harbor, etc. They’re going to attack one of our bases. There was none of that intelligence,” Kent said at another point as quoted by CNN.
The U.S. had assessed that Iran was potentially two years away from being a possible nuclear threat, Kent added.
“That’s not because the Iranians are stupid people. I think we can tell right now that the Iranians are anything but stupid. They had the ability, the brain power to actually develop one. or they could have simply traded a ton of oil with Pakistan or with someone else to actually get a nuclear weapon. They were not doing that, we had no intelligence to indicate that they were.”
Kent was a top administration official serving under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a longtime anti-interventionist who once ran as a Democrat against Trump going to war with Iran before joining his administration.
In his resignation letter to Trump, Kent said that while he supported “the values and the foreign policies” that Trump campaigned on in 2016, 2020 and 2024, he disagreed with the president’s decision to start a war with Iran.
In his interview with Carlson, Kent expanded on his claims in his letter that Israel drew the U.S. into the conflict.
“In the lead-up to this last iteration, a good deal of key decision makers were not allowed to come and express their opinion to the president,” Kent said, without naming names.
“The Israelis drove the decision to take this action, which we knew would set off a series of events, meaning the Iranians would retaliate,” Kent said.
Trump, who has said his war with Iran will end when “I feel it in my bones," said on Monday that “nobody” anticipated that Iran would respond to the U.S. and Israeli strikes.
“So they hit Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait,” Trump said. “Nobody expected that. We were shocked.”
After Kent’s resignation, Carlson told The New York Times on Tuesday he expected MAGA to attack him.
“Joe is the bravest man I know, and he can’t be dismissed as a nut,” Carlson said. “He’s leaving a job that gave him access to highest-level relevant intelligence. The neocons will now try to destroy him for that. He understands that and did it anyway.”
Trump slammed Kent on Tuesday, saying he was “weak on security” and realized after he read his resignation letter “it’s a good thing he’s out.”
“He said Iran is not a threat,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“When somebody is working with us that says they didn’t think Iran was a threat, we don’t want those people. There are some people who would say that, but they’re not smart people and they’re not savvy people.”
Kent said Wednesday that the president has been “very respectful” and “very kind” during their last conversation together, claiming that the pair “departed personally on good terms.”
“I spoke with him before I departed the administration,” Kent told Carlson. “It went great. I mean, not the best conversation ever. You know, I told him why I was leaving. He heard me out.”
During his interview with Carlson, Kent accepted he would receive backlash for his latest comments that contradict Trump, including from MAGA members loyal to the president.
Kent said “some of my former colleagues, people who I do like, have had to come after me.”
“I understand that too. They’re still there. They’ve got to discredit everything I’m saying right now. They’re watching taking notes. I’m not bitter about that.”
However Kent said he was speaking out to stop America “getting deeper into this quagmire” in Iran.
“Major things are happening right now in this war and the president is facing some very, very challenging decisions. So I personally just hope that he and his closest advisors listen and think, and that’s the main priority.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
