Trump’s Former Counterterror Chief Joe Kent Says President Needs to Focus on ‘Restraining the Israelis’ — Otherwise ‘The War Accelerates’

AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File

President Donald Trump’s former Director of the National Counterrorism Center, Joe Kent, urged the president to focus on “restraining the Israelis” to prevent the ongoing war against Iran from escalating.

After Trump announced that he had ordered his Department of War to “POSTPONE ANY AND ALL MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRANIAN POWER PLANTS AND ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE” subject to ongoing negotiations, Kent advised the president on Monday in a social media post:

Step 1 in deescalation must be restraining the Israelis, otherwise all efforts to negotiate will follow this pattern:

POTUS publicly announces deescalation.

Israel takes major strikes to destroy the negotiations & in turn weaken our ability to negotiate.

The war accelerates.

As supporting evidence, Kent shared a news report stating that Israel had begun “a new wave of strikes targeting infrastructure sites across the Iranian capital of Tehran.”

Kent resigned from his Trump-appointed position last week in protest over the president’s ongoing war against Iran.

“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,” wrote Kent in his letter of resignation. “As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.”

Just a day after Kent’s resignation, Trump publicly rebuked Israel for bombing a natural gas field co-owned by Iran and Qatar.

“NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL pertaining to this extremely important and valuable South Pars Field unless Iran unwisely decides to attack a very innocent, in this case, Qatar – In which instance the United States of America, with or without the help or consent of Israel, will massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field at an amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before,” wrote Trump in a Truth Social post.

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