White House criticizes Joe Kent’s resignation and ‘absurd’ allegations

The White House and its allies in Congress pushed back Tuesday at criticism of the war in Iran leveled by top counterterrorism official Joe Kent, who resigned his administration post in protest of the military operation. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt refuted Mr. Kent’s claims that Iran did not pose an immediate threat to the U.S., saying Tehran had been aggressively expanding its short-range ballistic missiles to achieve its “ultimate goal” of nuclear weapons.

“President Trump ultimately made the determination that a joint attack with Israel would greatly reduce the risk to American lives that would come from a first strike by the terrorist Iranian regime and address this imminent threat to America’s national security interests,” she said in a statement.

House Speaker Mike Johnson echoed Ms. Leavitt’s assertion: “I don’t know where Joe Kent is getting his information.”

“I’m on the Gang of Eight. I got all the briefings,” the Louisiana Republican said at a news conference Tuesday. “We all understood there was clearly an imminent threat that Iran was very close to the enrichment of nuclear capability and they were building missiles at a pace that no one in the region could keep up with.”

Mr. Kent resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center over his qualms about the war. He said Tuesday that he could not “in good conscience” continue in his role because Iran posed “no imminent threat to our nation” — directly contradicting President Trump, who cited “imminent threats” as a reason for the military operation that began on Feb. 28.

Mr. Kent said that the U.S. is waging a war “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

In his resignation letter to the president, he said that “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” deployed a misinformation campaign that “sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.”

“This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory,” Mr. Kent said.

Ms. Leavitt decried his allegation as “absurd,” saying Mr. Trump has been consistent in his warnings about Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

When asked about Mr. Kent’s claim that the U.S. is putting foreign interests above domestic concerns, Mr. Johnson said this is “clearly wrong.”

“Iran was building up ballistic missiles at such a rapid pace that we knew that their plan was to fire them upon Americans. The commander-in-chief and his administration had a very difficult decision to make,” he said.

Mr. Trump felt that he had to strike first to prevent mass casualties, Mr. Johnson added.

“Had the president waited, I am personally convinced that we would have mass casualties of Americans, service members and others, and our installations would have been dramatically damaged,” he said.

Mr. Johnson campaigned with Mr. Kent while he was running as a Republican candidate to represent Washington state in Congress.

Rep. Don Bacon, who has praised the military campaign in Iran, criticized the outgoing director.

“Good riddance. Iran has murdered more than a thousand Americans. Their EFP land mines were the deadliest in Iraq. Anti-Semitism is an evil I detest, and we surely don’t want it in our government,” the Nebraska Republican said in a statement, referring to EFP, or explosively formed penetrators.

But Sen. Mark R. Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a member of the Gang of Eight, said Mr. Kent is right.

The Virginia Democrat said that there was “no credible evidence of an imminent threat from Iran that would justify rushing the United States into another war of choice in the Middle East.”