Joe Kent, the outgoing head of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned this week over the Iran strikes, told Tucker Carlson on Wednesday that he and other senior officials with reservations were prevented from bringing their concerns directly to President Donald Trump. Kent said the president relied on a small circle of advisers for the February 28 decision to strike Iran and that a fuller debate inside the government was blocked.
“A good deal of key decision makers were not allowed to come and express their opinion to the president,” Kent told Carlson, adding there “wasn’t a robust debate.” He said there was no intelligence indicating Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons and accused Israeli officials and some U.S. media figures of amplifying a threat narrative that pushed the United States toward action.
Kent accused Israel of compelling the U.S. to act, saying Israeli leaders signaled they might move first and that those signals shaped U.S. choices. He referenced comments by prominent U.S. politicians, including Marco Rubio and House Speaker Mike Johnson, that he said reflected pressure tied to Israeli plans. Kent declined to name who specifically blocked his access to the president.
Kent’s account offers a window into internal disagreement over the strikes and suggests dissent existed at senior levels of the administration. As head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Kent led the agency responsible for analyzing and detecting terrorist threats; his office reported to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard, a former congresswoman and military veteran who has criticized talk of military action against Iran in the past, said Wednesday that judging whether Iran posed a threat was ultimately the president’s decision. Her office declined to comment further and she has not publicly spelled out her position on the recent strikes.
Kent’s assertion that an “Israeli lobby” influenced the decision has drawn criticism from Jewish groups and others, who said the characterization bordered on antisemitic tropes. He chose to make these remarks on Carlson’s program, where the host has also been accused of promoting antisemitic rhetoric.
President Trump has offered shifting explanations for the strikes and has pushed back against the suggestion that Israel compelled U.S. action. On Tuesday he dismissed Kent’s critique, calling him “weak on security” and saying officials who did not view Iran as a threat were not wanted in his administration. “They’re not smart people, or they’re not savvy people,” Trump said, adding that “Iran was a tremendous threat.” The White House did not immediately respond to inquiries about Kent’s interview.
Kent, 45, is a former Green Beret who completed 11 deployments before joining the CIA. His first wife, a Navy cryptologist, was killed by a suicide bomber in Syria in 2019, leaving him as a single father to two young sons; he has since remarried. He told Carlson he resigned after concluding his warnings would be ignored. “I know this path that we’re on, it doesn’t work,” Kent said, adding, “I can’t be a part of this in good conscience.”
