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In a wide‑ranging and unusually candid conversation, former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent explains why he resigned over the Trump administration’s war on Iran—and why he believes the United States has once again walked into a strategic disaster of its own making.
Kent’s account, drawn from decades inside U.S. covert and military operations, offers a rare insider narrative of how Washington’s pro‑war reflexes, Israeli pressure, and America’s own history of regime‑change hubris converged into the current crisis.
A War Built on a False Premise
Kent opens with the core claim that drove his resignation: Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States.
As he puts it, “Iran was not on the cusp of attacking us… They observed a very calculated escalation ladder.”
According to Kent, Iran halted proxy attacks once Trump returned to office, sat at the negotiating table, and even refrained from striking U.S. forces during the 12‑day war—until Israel launched its own attack on Iranian nuclear sites.
The only “imminent threat,” Kent argues, came not from Tehran but from Israel’s unilateral actions, which forced Washington into a conflict it did not need and could not win.
How Israeli Influence Shapes U.S. War Decisions
One of the most explosive threads in the interview is Kent’s description of how Israeli intelligence, lobbying networks, and media allies shape U.S. policy far beyond what most Americans understand.
Kent describes a “multi‑layered influence ecosystem” that bypasses normal intelligence vetting and pressures senior U.S. officials directly.
“They will come in and say, ‘They’re within two weeks of getting a bomb,’ and that night it’s repeated on TV,” he explains.
This echo chamber, he argues, successfully moved the U.S. red line from “no nuclear weapon” to “no enrichment at all”—a shift that made diplomacy impossible and war inevitable.
The Forever-War Reflex in Washington
Kent echoes what former officials like Lawrence Wilkerson have long warned: Washington has a structural bias toward war.
Defense contractors, political incentives, and a bipartisan foreign‑policy class create what Kent calls the “factory settings” of U.S. power—settings that default to escalation, not restraint.
Even Trump, who campaigned on ending endless wars, was eventually pulled into the Iran conflict. Kent argues Israeli officials and neoconservative advisers played to Trump’s ego, promising an easy, historic victory.
The U.S. Role in Creating ISIS—And Repeating the Pattern
Kent’s most damning historical analysis concerns the U.S. role in the rise of ISIS and al‑Qaeda affiliates in Syria.
He recounts how the Iraq War destabilized the region, empowered Iranian‑aligned militias, and pushed Gulf states and Israel to back radical Sunni factions in Syria.
“We were supporting al‑Qaeda, which eventually morphed into ISIS,” Kent says bluntly.
He describes how U.S. and Turkish support helped elevate Abu Mohammad al‑Julani, an al‑Qaeda figure who now effectively governs northwest Syria with tacit Western acceptance.
The lesson, Kent argues, is clear: regime‑change wars always produce monsters—and America never seems to learn.
Iran’s Strategy: Win by Not Losing
Kent believes Iran has adopted a long‑term strategy shaped by watching U.S. failures in Iraq and Afghanistan:
• survive • absorb blows • raise global energy costs • outlast Washington’s political will
Iran doesn’t need to defeat the U.S. militarily, he argues—only to avoid collapse.
And with control over the Strait of Hormuz, ballistic missile capacity, and regional alliances, Iran can keep the war costly indefinitely.
The Nuclear Danger: A Self‑Fulfilling Prophecy
Kent warns that U.S. and Israeli pressure may push Iran toward the very outcome Washington claims to fear.
“We basically destroyed the school of thought that opposed nuclear weapons,” he says, referring to the killing of Iran’s former Supreme Leader and the rise of hardliners.
He predicts Iran may now pursue a “North Korea solution”—a nuclear deterrent to prevent future attacks.
The Only Exit: Restrain Israel, Reopen Diplomacy
Kent’s prescription is stark:
- Publicly restrain Israel’s offensive operations
- Cut military aid if necessary
- Offer sanctions relief
- Reopen the Strait of Hormuz
- Return to negotiations
Without restraining Israel, Kent argues, the U.S. will remain trapped in an endless cycle of escalation.
“Unless we restrain Israel, I just don’t see us having a way out of this,” he warns.
This conversation is not just another critique of U.S. foreign policy. It is a rare moment when a senior insider—someone who helped run America’s counterterrorism apparatus—publicly breaks with the system he once served.
For ScheerPost readers, Kent’s testimony reinforces what independent journalists have long documented:
• U.S. wars are rarely about security • Israeli influence shapes U.S. decisions in ways the public never sees • regime‑change operations consistently backfire • Washington’s war machine is structurally incapable of learning from its failures
Kent’s resignation and his warnings should be a national scandal. Instead, they are being heard mainly on independent platforms—another sign of how tightly controlled mainstream narratives around war have become.
You can read more about Joe Kent MAGA Goons Smear The Grayzone to Get Back at Joe Kent
or Joe Kent’s Resignation, in His Own Words, Reveals MAGA’s Fracture Over War—Not a Break From Empire
Remember this too: as Nate Baer reported, “Then you’ve got the frauds like Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center who just resigned over the war. A MAGA devotee and former special forces operative who pulled the trigger for U.S. imperialism in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, his resignation wasn’t about ethics or principle. In his resignation letter, he even praised Donald Trump’s 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani. Trump was doing imperialism right then—now, in Kent’s view, he’s simply doing it wrong.”
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