In a sit-down interview with Tucker Carlson, former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent confirmed that intelligence did not suggest an imminent threat from Iran prior to US military engagement.
Tucker replayed a clip of Joe Kent telling Tucker himself in January 2024 that a war with Iran would be “very bloody,” demonstrating that his position has not changed, and his prediction seems to be playing out:
“I have no doubt that we could probably defeat some of their air defense, and go in there and have another shock and awe campaign. But again, we saw how the shock and awe campaign in Iraq really didn’t actually work in the long run…If we get deeply involved and deeply entangled with Iran, we are playing right into China’s hands because China would like nothing more than for us to be committing our military industrial base to a war in Eastern Europe in Ukraine and then to be committing our conventional military power, our blood and our treasure, back in the Middle East. That will make the Pacific, our actual border, extremely vulnerable to Chinese aggression – or, China will simply just watch us bleed out economically as we bleed out on the battlefield on these couple different theaters. It’s absolute insanity. It’s opening up Pandora’s box and again, for what gain to the American people?”
Kent told Tucker that there were options other than direct military action against Iran, but as he stated in his resignation letter, there are powerful pro-Israel lobbyists in the president’s ear.
Joe Kent tells Tucker Carlson that President Trump’s administration misled the world about Iran being an imminent threat.
— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) March 18, 2026
Kent says the real imminent threat came from Israel, which he claims was planning to strike Iran first, putting U.S. soldiers in harm’s way.
He says this… pic.twitter.com/iAGXU3ADD4
Kent said that he thinks that helping the Israelis with defense is fine, but by providing that defense, the US should be the position of being able to dictate when Israel goes on the offensive, but that “the Israelis felt emboldened that no matter what they did, no matter what situation they put us in, that they could go ahead and take this action and we would just have to react.”
In Kent’s opinion, Iran has demonstrated a very calculated escalation ladder in terms of its military engagement with the United States:
“For instance, in the lead up to the 12-day war before Midnight Hammer, the Iranians didn’t attack us,” Kent told Tucker. “They were engaged in negotiations with us. When President Trump came back into office, they stopped their proxies who were attacking us under the Biden administration because they knew Biden was weak. They stopped their proxies from attacking us as well. So they knew President Trump was someone who wanted to negotiate but more importantly they knew that President Trump was not someone to mess with because he killed Qasem Soleimani. He killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. He had defeated ISIS. They knew that President Trump was a man of action.”
After Operation Midnight Hammer, the June 2025 strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, the Iranians fired an equal number of missiles to the number of bombs dropped by the United States. They specifically targeted a US base in Qatar with no American troops.
Kent shares a concern, bolstered by intelligence reports but also suggested by many in the public, that US action to take out the ayatollah actually strengthens the regime. “We didn’t like Joe Biden. We didn’t like Barack Obama. But if an outside force were to come in here and try and topple them while they were the president, I would 100% rally around the flag. That’s just common sense,” Kent said. Economic sanctions would have created much more internal pressure around the regime, and that’s what would have gotten “protesters out on the street in Iran and that’s actually what the regime feared the most.”
Iran was not on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon, according to Kent, and mentioned that the Iranians have had a fatwa since 2004 against developing a nuclear weapon. The US used to consider the “red line” not to be crossed was Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, but within the past few years, certain forces have shifted that line to nuclear enrichment.
When the red line was Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, it left room for negotiating with President Trump, Kent told Tucker. “And only President Trump, I think, could successfully have negotiations with Iran because he actually punched them in the face. And the Iranians had been walking all over us. They had been killing our soldiers. All of that is true. I have no sympathy whatsoever for the Iranians, what their proxies were doing,” Kent said. On many of Kent’s combat missions overseas while serving in the US Army, he was directly contending with Iranian’s proxies.
But over time, Israeli intelligence and pro-Israeli influencers shifted the de facto policy to no nuclear enrichment.
Kent voiced a concern that the Iranian war will give rise to lone wolf terrorist actions on our home soil, especially as the United States continues to reap the consequences of President Biden’s disastrous open border. Kent himself testified to Congress about the approximate 18,000 known suspected terrorists that could be in our nation in December 2025.
“I truly believe that God put me where I am right now, really putting me through everything I’ve been through in my life, to bring me to this point,” Kent told Tucker. “I don’t believe that God said, ‘Hey, you’re here now in this moment to just sit back and be a good soldier for this iteration.’”
Tucker Carlson gets visibly upset as Joe Kent explains to him that the Counterterrorism Center had more leads to investigate foreign ties to Charlie Kirk's assassination, but were shut down from pursuing them. pic.twitter.com/0IU0jEC2cY
— Zach Costello (@ZachCostello_) March 19, 2026
Kent also spoke about his interactions with Charlie Kirk, who had supported Kent in his run for Congress. Kent said that back in June, in the stairway of the West Wing of the White House, Kirk “very loudly” said, “Joe, stop us from getting into a war with Iran.”
Tucker became visibly upset when Kent confirmed that his own investigation into Kirk’s death from the National Counterterrorism Center was blocked by the FBI. Kent made it clear that he had not reached any conclusions, but that there were still leads they wanted to run down, and there was reason to investigate the possibility of foreign ties to Kirk’s assassination. Their access to further investigation was cut off.
“It’s incredibly frustrating that there’s not more, especially considering how pivotal Charlie was to the MAGA movement and to President Trump – that there hasn’t been a more concerted effort to find the truth and to find justice,” Kent said.
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