Joseph Kent, the Trump administration’s director of the National Center for Counterterrorism (NCC), has resigned in protest over the US‑Israeli aggression against Iran.

In a post on the social media platform X on Tuesday, Kent wrote: “I cannot in good conscience support the war against Iran.”

“Iran posed no imminent threat to our country, and we entered this war because of Israel and pressure from its powerful American lobby,” he added.

Kent cautioned that continuing down this path would only deepen the crisis facing the United States.

“You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further towards decline and chaos,” he wrote in the letter addressed to Trump.

Kent’s resignation exposes widening divisions within Trump’s political base over the war and signals that serious questions about the justification for attacking Iran have spread to both senior administration officials and the US president’s core supporters.

Trump has offered shifting reasons for the strikes and has pushed back on claims that Israel forced the US to act.

Earlier this month, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., suggested that the White House believed Israel was determined to act on its own, leaving the Republican president with a “very difficult decision.”

The White House also had no immediate comment on Kent’s resignation.

The US and Israeli armed forces launched a joint military aggression against Iran in late February by attacking targets across Tehran, assassinating the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei and several senior Iranian officials. 

Since then, Iranian armed forces have retaliated swiftly by launching barrages of missiles and drones at Israeli‑occupied territories as well as US bases across the region.

According to Iran’s Ministry of Defense, Iranian forces have killed and injured at least 600 American troops at various US bases since the start of the aggression.

Iranian officials say targeting US military bases in the region constitutes “legitimate self‑defense.”

Referring to Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, they say the Islamic Republic has the legal right to defend itself against “acts of aggression” by the United States or the Israeli regime.

Source: Press TV