Trump resurfaces old tweet from intel official who resigned

In the wake of Joe Kent's resignation from the position of National Counterterrorism Center director over his opposition to the Iran war, President Donald Trump highlighted a years-old tweet in which Kent had urged the president to "wipe Iran's ballistic capability out."

In the January 2020 post on X, Kent tagged the president and wrote, "We should not sit and wait for the next attack, wipe Iran's ballistic capability out and get our troops out of Iraq – they are only targets now. No US WIA/KIA is a tribute to the professionalism of our military and intel professionals not Iranian restraint."

Kent made the post in January 2020 after a U.S. strike earlier that month killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force.

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In the resignation letter that he posted to X on Tuesday, Kent asserted that Iran did not pose an imminent threat to the U.S.

"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," Kent wrote.

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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard issued a post on X in which she noted that the president targeted Iran due to his view that the regime represented "an imminent threat."

"The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is responsible for helping coordinate and integrate all intelligence to provide the President and Commander in Chief with the best information available to inform his decisions," Gabbard said in the post. 

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"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," she noted.