Joe Kent: Why I resigned over Iran

Summary

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Podcast Summary: UnHerd with Freddie Sayers

Episode: Joe Kent: Why I resigned over Iran
Date: March 21, 2026
Guest: Joe Kent, former Head of the U.S. Counterterrorism Unit

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Overview

In this in-depth and timely conversation, UnHerd's Freddie Sayers interviews Joe Kent shortly after his headline-making resignation from the Trump administration. Kent, a senior CIA paramilitary officer and former Trump counterterrorism chief, explains his decision to step down—the most high-profile departure yet over U.S. actions against Iran. The discussion dives into the factional divides in the U.S. right, the role of Israel and its supporters, risks of escalation in the Middle East, and the personal and political costs of American foreign policy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Trump Administration: Hawks vs. Restrainers

• Divisions inside the White House, especially regarding Iran, between traditional interventionist Republicans and a "restrainer" camp wary of regime-change wars.
  • “Traditional Republicans…always viewed Iran as a problem that we have to solve by toppling the regime …[but] that just hasn’t worked.”—Joe Kent [02:40]
  • Cites Iraq, Syria, and Libya as disasters caused by reckless interventions.

2. The Influence of Israel and Its Lobby

• Kent’s core argument: U.S. policy has been unduly influenced by Israeli strategic objectives and supporters within the administration and media.
  • He resists naming specific individuals but says "an undue amount of influence from Israel and the Israel supporters" is driving increasingly hawkish U.S. action [03:48].
  • “They kind of willed it into being…we in the US Government were repeating that the Iranians can't have any enrichment, which short-circuited the ability to have negotiations.” —Joe Kent [04:49]
• Kent contends that U.S. red lines became indistinguishable from Israeli ones, making the U.S. “let[ting] them drive the timeline toward a war” [07:18].

3. Mechanisms of Influence and Policy Shift

• Media Echo Chamber:
  • “The advice that President Trump was getting was largely dominated by this ecosystem... echoed by pro-Israel media types on Fox News, the Wall Street Journal…almost in coordination with what the Israeli officials are saying.” —Joe Kent [07:18]
• Negotiation Barriers:
  • Israeli insistence that Iran should have no nuclear enrichment capability became U.S. policy, foreclosing diplomatic options.

4. Decision-making, Debate, and Resignation

• Robust internal debate preceded the so-called 12 Day War, with Kent and others arguing against escalation and for restraining Israeli action [10:51]:
  • “We have to restrain the Israelis. We have to tell them they can't go on the offense.” —Joe Kent [10:51]
• Why not resign earlier?
  • “At the time, I felt like it was my duty to kind of fight from within...My personal conscience as a veteran, saying if I ever had the ability to stop a war or speak out...that I would speak up.” —Joe Kent [15:06]
• Kent ultimately concluded internal dissent didn’t matter; only public action might check the White House.

5. The Precedent of “Clean” Interventions and False Confidence

• Venezuela and remote warfare:
  • Kent describes success in Venezuela as giving the administration false confidence that “we could just swoop in some commandos and take out the one guy.” He fears this “military magic” might be misapplied in Iran [17:26].
• Current Operations: While Trump’s campaign has not put U.S. troops on the ground, Kent warns world energy risks and Middle East complexity make escalation or quagmire much likelier [18:43].

6. Paths Forward and Potential “Off Ramps”

• A window for diplomacy remains:
  • “The first thing [Trump] has to do...is restrain the Israelis…If we don't restrain the Israelis...they will continue to escalate regardless of what we say.” —Joe Kent [20:20]
  • Encourages use of regional diplomacy, lifting oil sanctions, and working with Gulf states.
• Israeli Tolerance for Chaos:
  • “The Israelis have a high tolerance for chaos. We do not.” —Joe Kent [20:20]

7. Charges of Antisemitism and Navigating the Critique

• Kent expected and dismisses accusations of antisemitism, emphasizing it's about national interest, not religion:
  • “Quite frankly, if the Israelis were all Christians, I would have the exact same thing to say about it.” —Joe Kent [22:21]
• Warns against over-pathologizing criticism of Israel as antisemitic, insists it’s about outsized foreign influence in U.S. decisions.

8. The Nature of U.S.-Israel Relations

• Special Relationship, but...
  • Kent acknowledges the unique alignment and cultural closeness but warns against “blinding our judgment” or using Israel as “an easy button” [24:05].
• Supporting Defense, Opposing Offense:
  • Kent draws a clear line: U.S. should defend Israel if attacked, but “stop Israel from going on the offense to the point where we get attacked.” —Joe Kent [25:34]

9. Assassinations, Pressures, and Conspiracy Allegations

• Host probes Kent about comments regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk and attempted attacks on Trump.
  • Kent clarifies: No direct accusation against Israel, but says lines of inquiry with potential “foreign nexus” were blocked by federal law enforcement [28:21, 30:05].
  • “There was more work there to be done that we were not allowed to do.” —Joe Kent [30:05]
  • Raises possibility that Trump may feel under threat, but says “it’s incomplete…people deserve answers” [32:49].

10. Personal History and Its Impact

• Loss and Clarity:
  • Kent discusses losing his wife in Syria, the lessons of Iraq, and his sense of duty to prevent others from dying in similar wars [33:35]:
    • “If I ever have the ability to prevent other American young men, young women from going and dying on a foreign battlefield, I'll speak out.” —Joe Kent [33:35]

11. Historical Blame and the Role of Israel in U.S. Wars

• On the Iraq and Syria conflicts:
  • Kent blames “Israel's influence on American policymakers” —not Israel alone— for U.S. blunders in the Middle East [35:01].
  • “The common factor is the Israeli influence in the decisions that have been made…” —Joe Kent [35:01]

12. What’s at Stake: Predictions and Fears

• Darker scenarios:
  • Fears quagmire and escalation—"every leader that we kill off…the next leader…is going to be even more radical" [36:52]; possible use of nuclear weapons by Israel if conventional efforts fail.
• Domestic consequences:
  • Warns of economic collapse if conflict drags on, with potential collapse of the petrodollar and endangerment of the “America First” political project [41:39]:
    • “All of this could happen rapidly. People could suffer massively throughout our country and throughout the world…and the idea of America First, MAGA, whatever would be dead in the water.” —Joe Kent [41:39]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Israeli Influence:
  • “We were letting the Israelis, who we essentially pay for the vast majority of their defense and offensive capabilities, drive the timeline towards a war with Iran.” —Joe Kent [07:18]
• Resignation Principle:
  • “If I ever had the ability to stop a war…that I would speak up.” —Joe Kent [15:06]
• On special relationship critique:
  • “If the Israelis were all Christians, I would have the exact same thing to say about it.” —Joe Kent [22:21]
• On risk of escalation:
  • “We could reach a point of crisis where we have to make a decisive, drastic action…where the Israelis do something completely unpredictable…and use a nuclear weapon.” —Joe Kent [38:43]
• On personal loss and perspective:
  • “Losing my wife…gives me clarity. This isn’t something abstract. These have real ramifications.” —Joe Kent [33:35]

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Key Timestamps

• [02:40] Kent outlines hawk-restrainer divide in GOP/White House.
• [03:48 - 07:18] Role of Israel, the lobby, and media in shaping U.S. policy.
• [10:51] Kent’s stance in internal debates on Iran—calls for restraining Israel.
• [15:06] Why Kent stayed on after the 12 Day War; decision to resign.
• [17:26] Dangers of “commando magic” and overconfidence from Venezuela success.
• [20:20] What Trump must do to avoid escalation (restrain Israel, resume diplomacy).
• [22:21] Responding to antisemitism accusations.
• [25:34] Distinguishes defense vs. offense in U.S.-Israel relations.
• [28:21 - 32:49] Concerning assassination(s), foreign interference, and blocked investigations.
• [33:35] Personal history: military service, loss, and the cost of war.
• [35:01] On Israel’s influence in U.S. Mideast wars.
• [36:52] Dread scenario: quagmire, radicalization, possible nuclear use, economic collapse.
• [41:39] Final warning: “America First…dead in the water” if war continues.

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Conclusion

Joe Kent’s interview is a stark, personal, and controversial critique of the direction of American foreign policy under Trump, focusing especially on the Israeli influence and the dangers of escalation in Iran. Kent’s central message: only breaking with hawkish, lobby-driven policy—and restraining regional allies—can save America from another generational quagmire and avert disaster at home and abroad.

Transcript

[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

Hey.

[Stephen]

Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. So, spoiler alert, he'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

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[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

Hi there and welcome back to Unherd. Joe Kent is a name you probably heard of in the last week. He is a former U.S. serviceman. He was a warrant officer, a senior CIA paramilitary officer. He rose to be head of the counterterrorism unit for the Trump administration, which he was until about a week ago, not even a week ago, where he became the most senior official so far within the Trump administration to resign over the war in Iran. His resignation has prompted an enormous conversation inside the right in the US and across the world about the wisdom or not, of Mr. Trump's intervention. He joins me now after the end of a long week of doing quite a few major interviews. But I'm happy to say this is the first European outlet, non American outlet, that you are speaking to. And welcome to Unherd. Joe Kent.

[Joe Kent]

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

For the world outside America, let's start there. Those people who may not know the intricacies of Republican politics describe for us the two strands that one finds inside the Trump administration. The one that is more hawkish or more excited by this kind of intervention, and then the strand that is really much more interested in restraint.

[Joe Kent]

I would say there's your traditional Republicans who have always viewed Iran as a problem that we have to solve by toppling the regime and getting rid of the Ayatollah, getting rid of the Revolutionary Guards. And then I think that there are others who have said that, hey, the idea of toppling foreign, foreign regimes, it may sound appealing, but it just hasn't worked. We've tried it in Iraq, we tried it in Syria, we tried it in Libya, throughout the Middle east really, and we've never been successful at it. It's always resulted in disasters that just tend to compound upon themselves. So we should work towards using the full scope of American power through diplomacy, through our economic power, and when needed, limited strikes that don't get us involved in something that could be a prolonged conflict. And that's kind of where we find ourselves at right now.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

The voices that we thought were dominant. I mean, the vice president, J.D. vance, is known as a restrainer, someone who's not keen on foreign interventions, obviously Cabinet ministers, Tulsi Gabbard, your boss until very recently. There are well known doves, or at least restrainers, who are the voices inside the administration who still represent that more neocon point of view.

[Joe Kent]

Something that I think is important for me as someone who just left the administration. I don't want to put any of my colleagues in peril and I don't want to get into a game of, of like palace intrigue about like this person versus that person. What I will say is this is what I said in my resignation letter is that that I think there's right now an undue amount of influence from Israel and the Israel supporters to get us deeply entrenched in this war because Israel's strategic objectives are to take down the regime and kind of to bring about instability inside of Iran, whereas our, our goals are much more limited. So I think that's actually the main issue that I, that I hope to focus on as opposed to the, well, you know, this person's for that, this person's for that and having some kind of to tell all about who's who in the administration.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

By your characterization, this is in effect the result of the Israel Lobby and their impact on the thinking ultimately of the president. Without naming names, tell us how that influence in your experience kind of reaches the president and affects these kind of decisions.

[Joe Kent]

Yeah. At the very beginning of the Trump administration, there was a problem that the Israelis had. That problem was that basically President Trump was in a great place to negotiate a deal with Iran that would have prevented conflict. And I say this because in a previous Trump administration, President Trump kind of set the playing field by killing Qasem Solmani, not getting us involved, deliberately not getting us involved in a regime change war in Iran. So he showed the Iranians that like, he would not take any grief from them, he would not allow them to push us around as Obama and Bush had. He would take decisive action, but also at the same time, he wasn't going to take the trap of getting engaged in a, in a never ending war. President Trump drew a red line with Iran having a nuclear weapon. President Trump would always say, but as a candidate in 2016, Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. Well, the Iranians actually, the former supreme leader agreed and said that Iran doesn't want a nuclear weapon and even issued a religious decree, a fatwa back in 2004 saying that Iran can't develop a nuclear weapon. The Iranians calculus was that if you start trying to develop a nuclear weapon or you have a nuclear weapon, or you even just say you have a nuclear weapon, you're going to get treated like Saddam Hu saying, if you give up any ability to create a nuclear weapon, you're going to get treated like Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. So the Iranians developed a very pragmatic strategy where they would have some enrichment. They would have the potential of eventually developing a nuclear weapon if they so choose, but they wouldn't have a nuclear weapon and they would have strict probations on the nuclear weapon. That gave the Iranians and President Trump the ability to get to the negotiating table. And that's actually what was a threat to the Israelis. So at the beginning of the Trump administration, the Israelis came in and they basically use official engagements with the Trump administration and their surrogates in the media to say that the American policy was Iran can't have any enrichment capability. And they said it enough consistently that they kind of willed it into being. Where we in the US Government were repeating that the Iranians can't have any enrichment, which short circuited the ability to have negotiations.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

So in your view, was that in effect, the, as it were, Israeli push towards war, the dominant factor in the reason that the US has ultimately taken this action more than, let's say, you know, the President's own decision. I mean, that's, I guess what surprises us here, watching from afar, that you seem to put so much emphasis on the power of the Israeli lobby. Well, what about the power of the President to make his own executive decisions?

[Joe Kent]

Well, surely at the end of the day, the President is the guy who makes the decisions, I don't refute that. However, the advice that President Trump was getting was largely dominated by this ecosystem that I described with the Israeli officials. But then at the same time on the news, echoing the same talking points, would be pro Israeli media types on Fox News, you know, the Wall Street Journal, editorial board, New York Post, etc, saying basically the same things almost in coordination with what the Israeli officials are saying in particular about no enrichment and saying that, you know, enrichment equals Iran having a nuclear weapon, which couldn't be further from the truth. But they basically short circuited the negotiations by saying that. And then essentially the Israel, the Israelis put us in this position where they said an attack is going to be imminent because the Israelis were going to attack Iran and then Iran would retaliate against us. When you hear Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the President, speaker of the House, other administration officials describe the imminent attack that was going to happen against America. It wasn't an imminent attack because the Iranians were going to attack us. It was an imminent attack because the Israelis were going to attack Iran and the Iranians were going to respond. Which means we were letting the Israelis, who we essentially pay for the vast majority of their defense and offensive capabilities, we are going to let them, them drive the timeline towards a war with Iran, knowing that the Israelis have drastically different strategic objectives than we do in the war in Iran. And then that's why for me, I said I have to actually go and publicly speak out about this and resign because this is not a relationship we should have with a foreign country, I guess.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

How far do you think that campaign went? I mean, it's one thing to say there's an extremely effective lobbying campaign from Israel. I think most people would accept that. Even people who absolutely passionately agree with the current project. Do you believe they were deliberately putting false information in front of the President as part of a campaign of basically misinformation? Do you think that is a fair statement? Is that what you believe? That they were actually manufacturing lies in order to persuade the President to go to war?

[Joe Kent]

They convinced him that our policy was that Iran can't have any enrichment. And then you hear other people come in and say that like, well, if they have the ability to enrich, then they can rapidly develop a nuclear weapon which just flat out isn't true. But also, even if it was true, we have data since 2004 that says the Iranians were enforcing internally a prohibition on developing a nuclear weapon. So it wasn't necessarily a lie lie, but it was an expansion of the truth and it was making the President essentially believe that his policy was, you guys can't have any enrichment to take any kind of negotiation off the table.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

So is there no one in the circle immediately around him who could, I don't know, correct this false impression? I guess it makes him sound somewhat naive that he's sort of been so easily persuaded of something that you think is pretty self evidently not true. I mean, surely there are lots of senior officials in the White House and elsewhere whose job it is to correct any kind of false ideas. Where were they?

[Joe Kent]

There are. And in the lead up to the 12 Day War, we had very robust discussions, we had very robust debates about what we thought would happen if we attacked Iran or if the Israelis attacked Iran, if we kept it to limited strikes like we did against the nuclear facilities. And there was a lot of us in the intelligence community and the diplomatic community who said, hey, a full on war of Iran would be a disaster.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

So just to be clear. Sorry to interrupt, Joe, but just be clear. During those robust debates about the 12 Day War, you were on the side of don't do it?

[Joe Kent]

I was, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was on the side of like, look, we can't let the Israelis drive our timeline. What I didn't want to have happen was I didn't want the President to be rushed into having to make a decision. Several of us said, hey, look, we have to restrain the Israelis. We have to tell them that they can't go on the offense, that we will defend them if they're attacked, but if they go on the offense, it's going to change our relationship and we're going to have to take away some of the aid that we give them and we're going to have to draw a hard line otherwise. The Israelis, who were very clear with this, the Israelis were very clear. They said that they think that this is prime time to take down the regime. The regime is an existential threat to them. So they were very upfront with what they wanted. And I thought we needed to come down pretty hard on them and just say, look, look, if you guys go on the offense, you're not going to have our support. We'll defend you if you're attacked, but we need more time to make our decision. And also I truly believe that Steve Wyckoff was on the cusp back in the May, June time frame of getting a deal with the Iranians. He's a very good negotiator. He was communicating very effectively with members of the Iranian government. And I think there was a deal to be had there because they were, they were going back and forth on like, what level could enrichment be? How would this be supervised? They had agreed on no nuclear weapons. And so again, this was a threat to Israel's strategic objectives. So we had these robust debates. The conclusion was the 12 day war. President Trump got the fighting to stop in the 12 Day War, and then he concluded with saying, hey, we'll take away Iran's ability to enrich by conducting the strikes on the nuclear facilities. We knew that the Israelis would come back to us at the end of the 12 Day War in Midnight Hammer. We knew they would. And when they did come back, that is when I saw from my perspective, the robust debates kind of go away. And there was a much smaller group of advisors around President Trump. And again, it goes back to the official engagement from the Israelis, then echoed by the pro Israel media heads that were kind of in Trump's media diet.

[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

Hey.

[Stephen]

Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert, he'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

News flash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find Fantasy Fan Fellows wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

on that first robust debate that you're telling us about, you made the case that they shouldn't go ahead with the 12 day war. And then the President did. Some people will be asking, why did you not resign then if the president was doing something you felt was wrong?

[Joe Kent]

At the time, I felt like it was my duty to kind of fight from within because we were having robust debates. And hey, when the president executes something that you don't like, if you got your chance to say your piece, then your job as a presidential appointee is to salute, move out, execute the president's policy. I thought it was a decent idea to say that we could just conduct some limited strikes and then be done with them. But I knew that the Israelis would come back to us, and I was hoping that there would be a more robust debate in the second phase over whether or not this is going to happen. And that just failed to materialize. I gave it about two weeks of us trying to find off ramps during the Iran war, but I knew within about two weeks that we just weren't being listened to. And then, you know, myself, my, my, my personal conscience as a veteran saying that if I ever had the ability to stop a war or speak out against a war to make sure that the next generation didn't have to go off and fight and die, that I would speak up. But then also, too more broadly and more importantly, I think is to actually be able to talk to the President from the outside through the media to let that he has other options and he can still reverse the situation.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

Do you think you're having more impact now, potentially even on the President outside than you were able to have inside?

[Joe Kent]

Remains to be seen. We'll see what happens here in the next couple of weeks. I'm going to give it a shot.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

Was there similar levels of, as you call it, robust debate around the Venezuela action and were you against that as well?

[Joe Kent]

So because that wasn't a counterterrorism operation, I didn't have much to do with that. So honestly, I can't tell you if there was robust debate or not.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

Right. Were you against it?

[Joe Kent]

It was a big gamble. So yeah, I mean I, in general, in terms of going after another regime, I think it's not necessarily the best idea, although they obviously had a pretty well laid plan and so far that has worked out pretty well. So I don't know if I necessarily had a very strong opinion on it at the time.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

It seems like it's possibly the apparent success of those earlier interventions, both Venezuela and the 12 Day War, that seems to have given the confidence to the President that he can do these kind of things because they were sort of remote controlled, clean interventions. And you were among the people you say inside the administration saying that it could go wrong, new risks might be triggered, it could lead to a wider conflict. Didn't happen. So he maybe just thought, well, all these guys were warning me that it was going to become a mess, got away with it. I'm going to roll the dice again. Do you think that's a fair characterization?

[Joe Kent]

Absolutely. I think that factors for sure. And that was actually one of my big concerns coming out of Venezuela. It was an incredible operation. All credit to our intelligence agencies, all credit to the troops on the ground who made it happen. My concern was that now the, the general idea would be that if we, if we didn't like something that was taking place overseas, that we could just swoop in some commandos and take out the one guy that's a problem. I spent a career in special operations and that actually it kind of has been the downside of the effectiveness of special operations. So that was a concern of mine coming out of Venezuela, that we would, that this military magic could carry over to something as complex and strategically of consequence like Iran.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

Some people close to him might feel like this is just another example of something that is going well, he is not putting boots on the ground. You've referred to it as a quagmire. I guess it's not yet a quagmire. It still seems a remote Aerial campaign mainly. He's got an issue about the Strait of Hormuz. Obviously, there's, there's a lot of wider things going on in the region, but it's not true that he's yet been dragged into a full scale ground war. Maybe. Is there a chance that he'll get away with this one as well and stay remote?

[Joe Kent]

I don't believe so. I think because the consequences are so high for this one in particular, world energy, what you talked about with the Straits of Hormuz, impact that's already having on the price of the pump, natural gas, the impact that's going to have down the road with fertilizer, with the ability to feed large populations of the world, the stakes are just far higher. And something that we've, we've, we've failed to do with this operation that we did do with Midnight Hammer and that we did do in Venezuela is we haven't clearly articulated what our strategic goal is. We haven't said that our goal is to, you know, change the regime because that number works. So we're not really saying our strategic goal is. We're saying that, hey, we want to destroy all their boats, all their ballistic missiles, the irgc. But then we haven't said, like, what comes next after that. Do we just go home and expect the Straits of Hormuz to open? We, it appears to me that we haven't fully thought this out or articulated it. But I do think right now, while President Trump has some, has a little bit of time, I think we have a window where he could restrain the Israelis, work with our Gulf partners, get back to the negotiating table with the Iranians, open up the Straits of Hormuz and prevent a quagmire or a disaster. I just think back to if we were a few months into our operations in Iraq, had we drastically changed course then and not made some of the mistakes that we made, how different the Middle east would be and how different the outcome could have been.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

So do you believe there is a kind of off ramp for the United States still, without looking like a complete U turn and sort of surrender, what would that look like? I mean, if he suddenly says, oh, actually, I'm going to stop this. I want to negotiate again, that will look a little bit like just a U turn. How could he feasibly do that?

[Joe Kent]

I think it's very easy for President Trump right now, using his sheer force of will and his character, his personality, to say, hey, we want to get back to the negotiating table and we want to open up world energy Again, but the first thing he has to do in order to get the streets of Hormuz open and to stop what's going on right now is he has to restrain the Israelis. If we don't restrain the Israelis and tell them you can't go on the offensive anymore and probably even take away a feature of their defense to make sure they only go on defense, then the Israelis will continue to escalate this regardless of what we say to them. And even if they stop temporarily, they'll come back in a couple months and try it again. Because the Israelis believe that this is their one opportunity to take down the entire regime. And the Israelis have a high tolerance for chaos. We do not. The Israelis do. So restrain the Israelis. And then I think you work through the Gulf, the GCC countries, I think you need to do what Trump has already started doing in the last couple days, lifting some of the sanctions on Iranian oil so that it's in the Iranians interest as well, it's in their own national interest to keep the straits of Hormuz open so oil can flow. I think the move that he made to take sanctions off of Iranian oil, that's already on the water, I think that was a very smart move. That's the direction that we, we need to move in. But again, if we don't restrain the Israelis, kind of all bets are off. So I do think Trump can, in his own way, flip the table, which is a classic negotiating tactic that President Trump has used as a businessman and as a politician. He can flip the table, he can flip the script, and he can get us out of this. That's actually what gives me some hope.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

Let's just talk a little bit more about Israel, because that's the single biggest message from your resignation letter and the media you've done since. I mean, inevitably people will be accusing you of anti Semitism because you have drawn attention to this. And I just want to know where you consider the lines to be between being anxious about Israel's influence on the US and some kind of conspiratorial view of Jews or the Israel lobby's influence in a kind of outsized or anti Semitic way. What for you are the biggest the lines? How do we tell one from the other?

[Joe Kent]

I think Americans, or really any country should be skeptical of any other country dictating what they're doing, what they're, what, their policy. And right now, my issue with Israel isn't necessarily what Israel is doing, it's our reaction to it. When you have senior members of the government Secretary of State, the president coming out and saying, like, we had to attack Iran because the Israelis were going to. That's when, you know, the balance of power and the relationship is all wrong, especially considering how much we pay the Israelis for their own defense. So that's the biggest issue I have, is that the Israel lobby and the Israelis were able to influence us to such a way that we're now in a situation that benefits Israel more than America. And look, people are just going to throw out the anti Semitism stuff, like, I'm not even listening to it. I'm not paying attention to it. I'm not discussing the religion. Quite frankly, if the Israelis were all Christians, I would have the exact same thing to say about it. I just don't think any, any country should have this much influence over, over another country, over our country especially.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

Is it not right, though, that there is this special allegiance between the United States and Israel, particularly on the political right, that actually swims through the Trump project almost as much as the kind of America first aspect? And that is this idea of Western civilization, Judeo, Christian heritage, the idea that, you know, other civilizations are somehow a threat and the west needs to defend itself. And people in Trump world and who voted for him, they might share some of your ideas about America first or prioritizing the homeland, but they also feel moved by the fact that there's a Western successful small country in amongst all of those Muslim countries, and they feel a special responsibility to defend it. I mean, is that wrong?

[Joe Kent]

I understand the sentiment. And the Israelis, again, they do a very good job of making a compelling case. And it's not like, look, I work, worked a lot in the Middle East. It's, it is, as a Westerner, it's very challenging to work in the Middle East. It's a very different culture. So the Israelis, in a way, because so many of them are dual citizens of European and American background, they kind of offer us this nice easy button where they, they're willing to kind of do a lot of the, the hard work, for lack of a better term for us, where we can become kind of complicit and then not realize that they are pursuing their own national interest that may diverge from ours. And we have a lot of shared national interests. I mean, I think in like the straight counterterrorism realm, we share a lot of the same priorities and that's fine, but it's got to be a reciprocal relationship. We just can't let that cultural familiarity that we may have with them blind our judgment and say, well, now we're going to. If you guys want to go hit Iran, I guess we have to do it, too. That just doesn't work out in the benefit of the American government.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

But would you be content to watch Israel lose in some kind of regional conflagration? Because you would say that it's not in America's direct interest to defend that country? I mean, that's the fear, isn't it, that it's a tiny country surrounded by hostile ones. Iran is dedicated to its destruction, and its primary interest is to survive. I mean, would you go so far as to say you would tolerate the defeat or even destruction of Israel because it's not in America's interest to fight that war?

[Joe Kent]

No, we've always defended Israel. And I'm not saying don't defend Israel. I'm just saying stop Israel from going on the offense to the point where we get attacked. We're saying if we're. If we're saying an attack is imminent because Israel is going to attack Iran, not because Iran's going to wake up one day and decide to attack America, then, you know, the balance of power is off. I think it's fine for us to provide the defense for Israel if they are under attack. For instance, you know, when. When they were attacked after October 7, it was fine for us to go in there and provide them some aid and defend them. What's not fine, again, is for them to dictate what we do in terms of foreign policy.

[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

Hey.

[Stephen]

Hey. So each week, you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

News flash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fan fellows wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

I listened to your discussion with Tucker Carlson a couple of days ago. All of it really was a kind of very rational putting forward of this argument that America is too reliant on Israel. There was one section, though, that I felt was a little bit different in tone, which is when you were talking about the death of Charlie Kirk and the assassination attempt in Butler. And I just wanted to ask you to elaborate on that. It felt from what you were saying to Tucker, that you felt that it was plausible or possible that Israel was involved in some way in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Did I get that wrong?

[Joe Kent]

No, I'm not saying Israel in terms of Charlie Kirk. I'm saying that there was foreign angles that we didn't get to fully investigate that still need to be investigated. That was the role of the National Counterterrorism Center. The reason we got on that topic had asked me, and I've had a lot of Trump supporters, you know, ask this question to me, and then just more broadly is like, hey, do we, do we think Trump really just got duped here? Like, Trump was pretty, pretty clever and pretty smart when it came to foreign policy. He knew that this neoconservative stuff just didn't work. He basically put it, he put the counter to the neoconservative ideology on the map. So do we really think Trump was duped here? And I said, hey, what I outlined in my letter about the ecosystem, but we've been discussing about that's the most likely course of action. But Trump being pressured into making these, these decisions, I don't think can be completely discounted. There was two different assassination attempts against President Trump during the campaign. There was multiple breaches of his security in the lead up to the, to the 12 Day War. Charlie Kirk was one of the most vocal advocates against going to war with Iran. At the end of Midnight Hammer, we knew that the Israelis were going to come back and ask us to go to war again. Charlie Kirk again was vocal against us doing any more strikes or getting involved in any more operations against Iran. And then Charlie Kirk was having a blow up that we found out about with his pro Israel donors. Charlie is killed. We know there's people who had pre knowledge of that because they posted about it on the Internet. I know from my vantage point, the National Counterterrorism center, again, that there was foreign nexus. I'm not saying that's from one country or another. I'm not even saying it's tied to a country. I'm saying there was potential foreign nexuses that we weren't allowed to continue. What does that mean?

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

Sorry, just how to a civilian, what does foreign nexus nexus mean about connected to the assassination of Charlie Kirk?

[Joe Kent]

So a lead that, that could be of foreign origin. So the FBI will investigate everything domestic. So for instance, you know, from the time they had the suspect's name and it was determined that he was an American, FBI took lead on that. All the other leads from that very, very confusing day that had any potential of being foreign, the National Counterterrorism center in my old office would, would help investigate or take the lead on investigating. And there was more work there to be done that we were not allowed to do.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

When you say you weren't allowed to do it, who said you couldn't do it?

[Joe Kent]

So once you're the head, you were

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

the head of the counterterrorism Unit, right? You're the boss.

[Joe Kent]

Right. But we need the cooperation because a lot of this intermixes with the FBI's investigation. For a lot of it, we need the FBI and the DOJ's cooperation. So once Tyler Robinson was, was arrested, the vast majority of the investigation would hand it over to Utah state authorities. And we were basically told he we're done here. There's nothing else to investigate. We'll let you know if we need your help. Meanwhile, we had leads that we needed to continue to run down. So we, we were blocked from doing.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

Who has the power to block you as head of the Counterterrorism Unit? The Utah State Police certainly don't.

[Joe Kent]

No. But the, the DOJ and the FBI who controls the case files. So when it's a domestic crime like what took place against Charlie because it was on American soil, the, the, the ownership of that, that will be under the FBI and the DOJ's purview. Had it happened overseas, it would have been under our purview. And so they were the folks that we needed to go to for a lot of the data.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

So why do you think those people chose to block those lines of inquiry?

[Joe Kent]

I don't know. I don't know. I truly believe that most people in the administration want to get to the bottom of what happened to Charlie. But for whatever reason, in reasons I don't know, we were stopped from continuing to investigate. And when you take the totality of the assassination attempts, the breaches of President Trump's security that have been made, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, you can't help but notice that there is a potential pattern here that could. And I'm not saying this is happening, it is a potential. Where President Trump, somewhere in the corner of his mind, does feel as if he is under some pressure that there are powerful entities that could do him or his family harm.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

I just want to get to the bottom of this. Sorry if I'm being dense, Joe, but there's one thing that. If you mean President Trump might personally be worried for his own security if he pursues a particular foreign policy line, just because there's loads of people out there who have a very strong view, that's one thing. But if you believe that the Israeli state in some way was involved in that or has somehow, through agents, made threats to the president, that, to me, is a completely different order of allegation. I mean, which is it.

[Joe Kent]

It's incomplete. That's what it is. There, There's, There's. There's still a lot of questions that need to be answered about everything I just discussed with Charlie. There's, there's questions that need to be answered about Butler. There's questions that need to be answered about the breaches and insecurity. And look, I, I don't think by any means it all points to, like, the state of Israel. But if, if you just take a look, there's, there's. There. There's something there that we need to investigate more of, and people deserve answers to that.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

Your history is very remarkable. I mean, you've had a. A long and distinguished military career. You very tragically lost your. Your wife during the war in Syria. Do you feel like you have a, because of that history, a particular kind of emotional investment in these questions? I mean, how do you feel that that has affected you today?

[Joe Kent]

I think it gives me clarity. I have my experiences personally fighting on the front lines of the war on terror. And then I've also experienced the loss from the war on terror, not just through friends, but also losing My wife and having to, to raise our children alone after losing her. So I, I understand that the cost of war, that this isn't something that's abstract. These aren't just pawns on, on the battlefield for us to kind of move around. These have real ramifications. So, yes, this, this, this, this does give me a good deal of emotional investment skin in the game. Somewhere on my second or third deployment to Iraq, I started to realize that we were kind of lied to to, to get into Iraq. And I said to myself, you know, I was frustrated with guys like Colin Powell who had fought in Vietnam yet who kind of got us into this war under false pretenses. And I thought that they should have known better based on their experiences. And I said to myself, as a very young man, if I stay in this game and I ever have the ability to prevent other American young men, young women from going and dying on a foreign battlefield, I'll speak out and have easement about it. And over the last couple weeks, that, that resonated with me heavily, and that's what kind of led me to this point.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

In your resignation letter, you say, I'm quoting here, I lost my beloved wife in a war manufactured by Israel. I mean, that's quite strong language. Most people around the world feel like the Iraq war was mainly the conception of George W. Bush more than manufactured by Israel. I wonder, do you blame Israel for that tragedy?

[Joe Kent]

I blame Israel's influence on American policymakers like George W. Bush. I mean, look, it wasn't just Israel. It was the neoconservatives, but the heavy Israeli lobby. Benjamin Netanyahu advocated heavily for the war in Iraq. The Israelis also advocated heavily, heavily for our intervention in Syria because we had screwed up Iraq so bad by the time we were done with our conflict there after eight years, we basically handed over Iraq to Iranian proxies who were working with Bashar Al Assad in Syria, which is a direct threat to the Israelis as well. And so the Israelis encouraged us to engage in this dirty war that led to the rise of Al Qaeda and isis. So at the end of the day, when you reflect back on most of the major policy decisions that we have made in the Middle east, that the blame has to be laid solely on American policymakers who implemented the policy. But the common factor is the Israeli influence in the decisions that have been made in the Middle East. And that's what we need to stop doing, and we need to start putting our own interests first.

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[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

You've given us one scenario of a kind of better outcome at the end of this conflict, which is that Mr. Trump will decide to de, escalate, return to the negotiating table. I guess that must be the less likely option now, although you hope that it will happen. What do you think is the other option? I mean, if the campaign continues, what do you fear will happen next? I mean, sketch for us that darker future.

[Joe Kent]

My fear is that our current campaign to take out the ballistics, take out the Navy, et cetera, take out the irgc, it simply won't be affected because Iran is a massive country. They have a very deep bench. And the more of their leaders that we kill off off, I think the more galvanized the people are going to become. I think every, every leader that we kill off, the next leader who takes his place is going to be even more radical and more galvanized than the one before them. So the Iranian will to fight, I think, is only going to intensify. We learned that lesson in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places. So they will double down and potentially we will get to a point where we either are tempted to put boots on the ground, which will be catastrophic, or we will find ourselves in a situation where the Israelis will say, hey, we've got to go for broke. We have to do something drast. If the Israelis can't get a significant part of the populace to rise up or they can't get rid of the clerical regime, the irc, that way, I do fear the Israelis could do something like escalate to using a nuclear weapon. President Trump said that he wants a total surrender of the Iranian people. And the only time we've used language like that before was in World War II, where we either fought the Germans basically to where they were beaten to the point of submission or to where we used a nuclear weapon in Japan. So because really, Iran is just such a big country and it's a hard country to get complete submission of, I do fear a drastic outcome if we continue to stay in this war. Plus, we're going to be on a tight timeline because what's taking place in the Straits of Hormuz with the, with the effect it's having on the energy market, that's going to have massive ramifications in Europe, in America, gas prices, fertilizer production, etc. So there's going to, we're going to reach a point of crisis where we have to make a decisive, drastic action. And that's where I fear a massive escalation of a ground force or the Israelis doing something complet, completely unpredictable, which they've done pretty much consistently up to this point, and using a nuclear weapon.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

And what happens domestically in the U.S. in that scenario, if it doesn't stop and if it does escalate in the way you describe what happens to the Trump project, what happens to the political project that you voted for multiple times and that you've been part of?

[Joe Kent]

Well, at that point, I mean, then I think politically, I mean, I'm less worried about the politics. I'm worried about the catastrophe overseas, and I'm worried about what happens to our country. I'm worried about another generation going off and fighting and dying, you know, in a quagmire war that my generation, the global war on terror veterans that we should have known better than to get our country into at that point. As for, like, you know, the Trump agenda, America first, whatever, I would say that we had failed to live up to what we had ran on and what we promised to deliver to the American people. And that's gonna be a great shame because there was a lot of great, solid ideas in the Trump administration and America first agenda that was already having a good impact on country in the first Trump administration and even in this administration as well. So it will be a massive squandered opportunity to put our country on a new trajectory for a better future. So that's my fear overall, though. My fear is us getting involved in a deeper quagmire, losing more American lives in the Middle East.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

Right. I mean, it's not just politics, it's also the future of the country. I mean, if you, do you believe that if the President doesn't change course that that political project is over, I mean, do you think he will start losing his, his base? Do you think the next election looks less likely? I mean, play that forward for us. It's, it's the future of the country we're talking about.

[Joe Kent]

Yeah. I mean, if you just look at energy prices alone, I mean, the, the, the effect that that's going to have on the American economy, the American economy, the world economy, is already in a bad spot with inflation. If you add in an energy crisis because of what's taking place in the streets of Hormuz, that's going to really harm people's like daily lives. That could even have a, a major impact on fertilizer production, on our ability to feed our populations, and then also too too, the more harm that we do to energy production in the strengths of our moves. We're killing off the petrodollar. We're killing off the ability and the confidence in our dollar system. We've already got the Chinese coming in and getting Iranian oil and they're settling those transactions in yuan, not the petrodollar. Our economy right now is built on us being the prime reserve currency holder, meaning everybody backs up their currency with the dollar, settles transactions in dollars in particular, settles those oil transactions in dollars. The longer this crisis goes on on, the more confidence in that system erodes. And that's going to take away our ability to run our economic system the way that we run it right now, with all of its faults, and I think it has a lot of faults. I don't think us having a massive national debt is good for us, but having the dollar collapse as the world reserve currency holder would be absolutely catastrophic for our nation. And again, back to your question about the politics of it all. All of this could happen rapidly. People could suffer massively throughout our country and throughout the world. And then at that point, point, I mean the idea of America first maga, whatever would, would be dead in the water. I think that'd be less consequential, honestly, than all the other effects would have on our nation.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

Joe Kent, thank you so much for your time.

[Joe Kent]

Thanks. Great, great talking with you.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

That was Joe Kent until a few days ago, the head of the Counterterrorism unit of the United States, a senior intelligence official for the administration of Donald Trump, he has resigned in protest at the Iran war. What strikes me, and we've been covering this exact point of tension inside the Trump administration for some time between the so called hawks and the so called restrainers, that this resignation really is a decisive moment in that and how it plays out in the next few weeks could decide the future of the Trump presidency. I think a lot of people on the more, let's call it, hawkish side will be quite anxious that someone so plausible seeming, someone so well spoken as Jo Kent, someone who is quite difficult because of his biography and because of the way he conducts himself to dismiss as a crank or a conspiracy theorist, is nonetheless unashamedly putting out the message that it is the, the Israel lobby that he holds directly responsible for diverting the president into what he thinks is this catastrophic path. And I was questioning him there a little bit about his history. Tragically, he lost his first wife during the Syria war, and he pretty much said, he said in terms that he blames Israel's influence on the United States for her death, for that tragedy. So we have someone who has a very deep anxiety about that relationship and that country making a very delicate and difficult and to some people, very controversial argument. Some people listening to it will no doubt think, okay, he's got a reasonable point. But in making dark insinuations about the assassinations of Charlie Kirk and potential kind of kompromat against the president, that seems to be going too far. It seems to be going into a kind of conspiratorial zone that a lot of people won't feel comfortable with. Others will say, yes, what he's saying is pretty much obviously true, and they'll be happy that someone is saying it. As ever here at Unherd, it's up to you how you fall down on that controversy. We bring you the voices. We are happy to be the first outside America organization that Joe Kent chose to talk to. And we will be following all of this very closely thanks to you. And thanks to Joe Kent. This was unheard.

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Oh actually they will have to get up and open the door.

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[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen. Your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Interviewer (Unherd Host)]

Hey Hei.

[Stephen]

So each week, you'll get my unfiltered RA Reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find fantasy fan fellows wherever you get your podcasts.