WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced his resignation on Tuesday, citing his concerns about the justification for military strikes in Iran and saying he “cannot in good conscience” back the Trump administration’s war.

“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,” Kent said in a statement posted on social media, making claims President Donald Trump has denied.

Kent, a former Green Beret and political candidate with connections to right-wing extremistswas confirmed last July on a 52-44 vote. As head of the National Counterterrorism Center, he was in charge of an agency tasked with analyzing and detecting terrorist threats.

His resignation demonstrates that the unease about the war within Trump’s base extends to at least one senior member of his Republican administration.

The leadership change comes at a time of heightened concern about terrorism following several recent violent attacks in the U.S.

Justification for Iran strikes at heart of resignation

Kent’s decision came down to the reasoning behind the strikes on Iran, he wrote in his resignation letter.

Trump has offered shifting reasons for the strikes and has pushed back on claims that Israel forced the U.S. to act. House Speaker Mike Johnson has suggested the White House believed Israel was determined to strike on its own, leaving the Republican president with a “very difficult decision.”

Speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said he always thought Kent was “weak on security” and if someone in his administration did not believe Iran was a threat, “we don’t want those people.”

“They’re not smart people, or they’re not savvy people,” Trump said. “Iran was a tremendous threat.”

A year ago, in nominating Kent, Trump praised him as a man who had “hunted down terrorists and criminals his entire adult life.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, whose office oversaw Kent’s work, wrote in a social media post Tuesday that it was up to Trump to decide whether Iran posed a threat.

“After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion,” Gabbard wrote in the post. She did not mention her own views of the strikes.

Democrats strongly opposed Kent’s confirmation because of his past ties to far-right figures and conspiracy theories. But following his resignation, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Kent’s concerns about the war in Iran were justified.

“I strongly disagree with many of the positions he has espoused over the years, particularly those that risk politicizing our intelligence community,” Warner said. “But on this point, he is right: There was no credible evidence of an imminent threat from Iran that would justify rushing the United States into another war of choice in the Middle East.”

Johnson, though, pushed back on Kent’s claims at a press conference on Tuesday.

“I got all the briefings. We all understood that there was clearly an imminent threat that Iran was very close to the enrichment of nuclear capability and they were building missiles at a pace no one in the region could keep up with,” Johnson said.

Johnson said he is convinced that if Trump had waited “we would have mass casualties of Americans, service members and others, and our installation would have been dramatically damaged.”

Departure follows three recent acts of violence

In New York City, two men who federal authorities say were inspired by the Islamic State group took powerful homemade bombs to a far-right protest outside the mayoral mansion.

In Michigan, a naturalized citizen from Lebanon rammed his vehicle into a synagogue, where he was shot at by security before he fatally shot himself.

And in Virginia, a man previously imprisoned on a terrorism conviction opened fire in a university classroom. Officials said the attack ended when he was killed by students.

Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Kash Patel are scheduled to testify before lawmakers this week about threats facing the U.S., an annual hearing likely to be dominated this year by questions about the Iran war and the revelation that outdated intelligence likely led to the U.S. firing a missile that hit an elementary school in Iran and killed more than 165 people.

A veteran and former congresswoman from Hawaii, Gabbard has previously criticized talk of military strikes in Iran. Six years ago she said that “an all out war with Iran would make the wars that we’ve seen in Iraq and Afghanistan look like a picnic. It will be far more costly in lives, American lives, and American taxpayer dollars — and all towards accomplishing what goal? What objective?”

A spokesperson for Gabbard declined to answer questions about Gabbard’s views on the current strikes.

A popular figure among Trump supporters

Kent’s military background and his personal story of sacrifice made him a compelling figure among Trump supporters.

Before joining Trump’s administration, Kent ran two unsuccessful campaigns for Congress in Washington state. As a Green Beret, he saw combat in 11 deployments before retiring to join the CIA. He also endured tragedy: His wife, a Navy cryptologist, was killed by a suicide bomber in 2019 in Syria, leaving him with two young sons. Kent, 45, has since remarried.

During the United States’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Kent criticized what he said was a misguided desire for nation building by some in Washington, D.C.

“It speaks to our hubris,” Kent told reporters while campaigning for Congress. “For us not to have learned from all this just shows that there are people making money and making their careers at the other end of it. They’ve been doing it on the backs and dead bodies of U.S. soldiers.”

During his 2022 congressional campaign, Kent paid Graham Jorgensen, a member of the far-right military group the Proud Boys, for consulting work. He also worked closely with Joey Gibson, the founder of the Christian nationalist group Patriot Prayer, and attracted support from a variety of far-right figures.

Early during his first campaign, Kent acknowledged that a political consultant set up a call intended to broaden his social media reach that was joined by Nick Fuentes, a popular right-wing influencer who has said that Jews are holding the U.S. “hostage” and once proclaimed that “Hitler was awesome, Hitler was right.”

Kent later disavowed those ties and stated that he rejected all “racism and bigotry.”

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Kent refused to distance himself from a conspiracy theory that federal agents instigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, as well as false claims that Trump won the 2020 election over Democrat Joe Biden.

Republicans praised Kent’s counterterrorism qualifications, pointing to his military and intelligence experience.

Sen. Tom Cotton, the GOP chair of the Intelligence Committee, said in a floor speech that Kent had “dedicated his career to fighting terrorism and keeping Americans safe.”

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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Brian Slodysko contributed to this report.

Through lectures, scoldings and outright threats, President Donald Trump and his aides are ratcheting up the pressure on journalists to cover the war in the Middle East the way the administration wants.

The Republican president has fumed on social media about stories he doesn’t like and berated a reporter on Air Force One. The government’s top media regulator has warned that broadcasters risk losing their licenses if they don’t stay away from “fake news.” Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, have questioned the patriotism of news outlets because of their reporting.

Trump has complained about war coverage in both specific and general ways. In a social media post, he said news reports exaggerated the damage to planes that were attacked by Iran at an airport in Saudi Arabia. He attacked “Corrupt Media Outlets” for falling for AI-generated false reports created by Iran and said the media “hates to report” how well the U.S. military has performed.

All presidential administrations tangle with the press; it’s the natural byproduct of journalists’ watchdog roles in a democratic society. But the incidents of the past few days speak to a hostility toward the very idea of being questioned — in a way that, some say, scratches up against the First Amendment itself.

A contentious gaggle on Air Force One

Meeting with reporters on Air Force One while returning to the White House from Florida late Sunday, the president objected to a question from ABC News’ Mariam Khan about a fundraising message that used a photo taken at last week’s dignified transfer ceremony of the remains of U.S. service members.

Khan was working as the pool reporter on the plane, but when she told Trump she was with ABC, he said: “I think it’s maybe the most corrupt news organization on the planet. I think they’re terrible.”

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr cited Trump’s Truth Social message about the planes struck in Saudi Arabia in warning news outlets to be careful about what they report.

“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions — also known as fake news — have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr wrote on X over the weekend. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their license if they do not.”

Decades of court decisions have generally sided with the press over government attempts to regulate the content it produces. But Carr said making changes is in the best interest of legacy media outlets because so many people don’t trust them.

His ability to make changes, however, is limited.

The FCC does not regulate networks like CBS, NBC and ABC — although it does have the authority to reject the licenses of individual affiliates of those networks when they come up for renewal. Cable news networks BLN, Fox News Channel and MS NOW are not under the FCC’s purview. The Trump message that Carr retweeted mentioned only The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal specifically, and the FCC has no authority over newspapers.

Punishing a television affiliate for war coverage that Carr objects to is likely to run afoul of the law, noted First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams in an interview Monday.

“The broadcast media is always at risk of a sort that newspapers are not. But at its core, they are protected by the First Amendment,” Abrams said, “and these statements by the chairman seem to me are directly threatening First Amendment interests and First Amendment principles.”

Abrams said he’d argue that robust war reporting is just the sort of public interest work that television stations should be doing to justify their licenses.

Intimidation may be Carr’s motive. And that doesn’t have to mean intimidating a news outlet to pull its punches, said Barbara Starr, a former BLN Pentagon correspondent. “The risk is the climate they create,” she said. “Are people going to be afraid to talk to reporters? Some of them will be, and that’s a serious matter.”

What kind of reporting is expected from ‘patriotic’ news outlets?

Trump said on social media that he was thrilled to see Carr looking at the licenses of the “highly corrupt and highly unpatriotic ‘News’ organizations.” Their efforts were endorsed Monday by hosts of the influential “Fox & Friends” morning show on Fox News Channel.

“The president has said enough with this coverage, from other networks that are not telling you the truth, that are so negative about what is going on,” said Fox’s Ainsley Earhardt, without specifying the outlets she was referring to. “This is a pro-America fight, and every network needs to get on board with that.”

Hegseth, in his most recent Pentagon war briefing, specifically attacked BLN. Under his administration, most legacy news outlets have been thrown out of their regular spaces in the Pentagon press room because they would not agree to his new rules that he said restricted their work. Some reporters from exiled outlets are allowed back for briefings, although Hegseth seldom takes their questions. Without an explanation, still photographers have been banned from briefings.

Hegseth said a BLN story about the administration being unprepared for Iranian attacks on the world’s oil supply was ridiculous. He offered his own edits of headlines that a “patriotic press” should use onscreen.

“The sooner that David Ellison takes over that network, the better,” Hegseth said, in reference to the Paramount Global chief, whose company is expected to take over ownership of BLN. The administration is hoping that will result in more Trump-friendly coverage.

Mark Thompson, BLN’s chief executive, said the network stands behind its work. “Politicians have an obvious motive for claiming that journalism which raises questions about their decisions is false,” he said. “At BLN, our only interest is telling the truth to our audiences in the U.S. and around the world, and no amount of political insults and threats is going to change that.”

Starr, now retired from Pentagon reporting, said she sees journalists consistently breaking stories despite the limited access and hostility toward their work under the current administration.

“That has always been the case,” she said. “The level of intimidation has definitely ramped up and, in response to that, the commitment to the First Amendment and quality journalism has ramped up even further.”

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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.