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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 KENT
U.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 EAST
Joseph 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/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
More than five months have passed since Trump launched the war against Iran in conjunction with Israel. The U.S. military is currently conducting a blockade against Iran and it remains unclear when the conflict will conclude.
“Right now, we’re at a place where President Trump could walk away from it. We haven’t recently taken any losses,” Kent said, adding that the president could withdraw U.S. troops from the region. “And I think he has the political power to basically sell it as a win or at least kind of a draw to the American people.”
Kent said he would encourage those who agree with him to “call their congressmen, call their senators, call the White House and” tell them “that we want out of war right now.”
In a statement to Fox News Digital on Wednesday, White House spokesman Davis Ingle targeted Kent.
“President Trump has destroyed nearly all of Iran’s military capabilities and is crushing what’s left of its abysmal economy with the most powerful naval blockade in world history. In quitter Joe Kent’s twisted mind, that somehow means Iran is winning, which only proves he doesn’t know his ass from his elbow,” Ingle said in the statement.
TRUMP CAN DECLARE IRAN VICTORY NOW AND WITHDRAW TROOPS, FORMER COUNTERTERROR OFFICIAL ARGUES
U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One on August 9, 2026 at Morristown Airport in Morristown, New Jersey. President Trump spent the weekend at his Bedminster, N.J. golf club. (Eric Lee/Getty Images)
Asked whether he has any interest in running for political office again, Kent, who has run unsuccessfully for Congress twice, told Fox News Digital that he does not “have any political aspirations.”
But he said that he wants to help construct a “political coalition” that conveys to Americans “that a reason why it seems like no matter who they vote for their, their quality of life is not improving,” is because no matter who occupies the Oval Office, much of “their time and our money … and our national will” is expended “on these foreign wars,” and “propping up an empire that does not benefit the American people.”
Both parties “agree that we should be engaged in … endless foreign wars,” he said.
When Americans choose between a Republican and Democrat, they end up with “the next war,” “more deficit,” “more debt,” and have “their civil liberties … encroached upon,” he said.
TRUMP SAYS IRAN TALKS ARE DEAD, INSISTS STRAIT OF HORMUZ IS ‘OPEN AND OPERATING’
Then-Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Joseph Kent testifies before the House Committee on Homeland Security in the Cannon House Office Building on Dec. 11, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
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Kent said the U.S. cannot afford to dole out foreign aid, given the national debt, inflation, and the condition of the economy — but if foreign aid is going to be distributed, he said that it should go “to partners that actually benefit our nation’s security, not to countries that are gonna drag us further into more conflicts” which “actually end up costing America more in the long run.”
He said the U.S. should not provide aid to nations “that are actively spying on us and running influence operations like the Israelis are.”
