Ask most Americans what they remember about the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and I suspect they will say that there were no WMDs. The predicate for the action – the presence of weapons of mass destruction – was false. That reality tainted everything that followed including the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Today the Trump Administration faces a similar predicament. While the premise for the Iran attack has shifted, one constant has been the need to stop Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon and prevent an imminent threat to the United States.
Already that notion has been called into question. But Joe Kent’s resignation as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center ensures that Iran will be remembered like Iraq. The Administration has struggled to get on the same page from the get-go of the February 28th strike.
First there was Secretary Rubio speaking to the press before a Capitol Hill briefing for Congressional leadership. Said Rubio on March 3rd: “We knew there was going to be Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”
When that briefing was over, Speaker Mike Johnson parroted Rubio’s explanation. But immediately people began to question whether the U.S. had allowed Israel to dictate the initiation of a war. The next day, President Trump contradicted Rubio’s account saying if anything, he’d forced Israel’s hand, not the other way around. And for his part, Rubio said he been quoted out of context.
Enter Joe Kent, the tiebreaker. In his resignation letter yesterday, Kent said:
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
His use of the word “lobby” seemed both deliberate and pointed.
Now the ball was back in Speaker Johnson’s court. He doubled down.
“I’m on the Gang of Eight. I got all the briefings. We all understood there was clearly an imminent threat,” Johnson said in a press conference, referring to the classified briefings provided to top Congressional leaders.
“I don’t know where Joe Kent is getting his information, but he wasn’t in those briefings, clearly,” Johnson said.
Democrats who were also present for the Gang of Eight briefings disagreed with Johnson’s characterization.
No doubt realizing the significance of Joe Kent’s words, Caroline Levitt posted a particularly lengthy post on X, beginning with these words:
There are many false claims in this letter but let me address one specifically: that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation. This is the same false claim that Democrats and some in the liberal media have been repeating over and over.”
Her explanation was more nuanced than saying a threat was imminent. Instead, she spoke of “immunity”.
“Iran was aggressively expanding their short-range ballistic missiles to combine with their naval assets to give themselves immunity – meaning they would have a degree of a capabilities that would give them immunity to hold us and the rest of the world hostage.”
For his part, Trump said Kent’s exit is a “good thing” and that he was “very weak on security”.
“When somebody is working with us that says they didn’t think Iran was a threat, we don’t want those people,” Trump said from the Oval Office. “They’re not smart people, or they’re not savvy people.”
When the news broke, I was interviewing Richard Clarke, who advised 3 U.S. presidents on national security and was the nation’s first cyber czar. I thought the interview was extremely informational, and you can watch it on YouTube.
When I asked Clarke about Kent’s resignation he said:
“Well, Joe Kent is the head of the Counterterrorism Center for the United States government. His resignation, I think, is part of a piece where our counterterrorism capability is much less than it should be. The FBI in particular, as well as CIA, have been decimated in the counterterrorism ranks over the course of the last year. We are probably in worse shape now than we have been since 9/11 to deal with the potential threat of foreign terrorism in the United States.
“Now, as to why we started the war, I think we started the war because Bibi Netanyahu and Donald Trump had a mutual agreement that they wanted to destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities. And the problem is they haven’t. Netanyahu also had the additional goal of destroying the Iranian regime. They haven’t done that either. And I think when this war ends, Iran will continue to have the nuclear material, continue to have the nuclear know-how, and the regime will still be in place. Many of the regime leaders will have been killed, but the regime run by the ayatollahs and the IRGC will still be in place. Those were the two war aims, and I don’t think they’ll achieve either one of them.”
This will all be fodder for the Dems to unravel when they retake the House and obtain subpoena power. Count on Congressional hearings in early 2027. And if not, here’s hoping Bob Woodward has another book in him.
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