Former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, who resigned in March due to his opposition to the Iran war, contends that President Donald Trump should remove U.S.combat troops from the Middle East.
During an interview with Fox News Digital on Tuesday, he said Republicans and Democrats both support U.S.involvement in "endless foreign wars," but that he wants to help create another "political coalition."Kent, a military veteran and gold star husband who personally grasps the grave consequences of war because his late wife Shannon was killed in Syria in 2019, said that the U.S.
is "making our troops basically tripwires so that if the Iranians hit us, and we lose more troops, then we will have to double down" on the war."This war is not in our national security interest," he said."Iran posed no imminent threat," the retired Green Beret asserted, reiterating the same view he voiced in his mid-March resignation letter to the president less than a month after the start of the Iran war.
"This war was prompted by the pressure that the Israelis were able to exert on the Trump administration and the influence that the, the Israelis have over our government."CLICK HERE TO WATCH FOX NEWS DIGITAL'S FULL INTERVIEW WITH JOE KENTU.S.bases in the region have proven to be a liability, he said."The Iranians were able to hit them with their ballistic missiles, with their drones.
We had to evacuate our bases.We couldn't even fight a war from our military bases.
So the fundamental question is, what good is a military base that you can't fight a war from? So really our bases and our presence in the region simply give the Iranians the ability to reach us and strike us whenever they want," Kent asserted.EX-COUNTERTERRORISM OFFICIAL JOE KENT CONTINUES CALLING FOR US MILITARY WITHDRAWAL FROM MIDDLE EASTJoseph Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Dec.11, 2025.
(Daniel Heuer...