The Director of the USNational Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, who advises both US President, Donald Trump and Director of National Intelligence on terror threats, has resigned over the war with Iran.
His resignation, the first most high-profile from the Trump’s administration since the war started, came on a day the new Iran leader, Mojtaba khamenei, rejected de-escalation proposal conveyed to Tehran by intermediaries.
This also came on a day Israel said it had killed a linchpin of Iranian politics, the National Security Chief, Ali Larijani, in overnight strikes, a claim that, if confirmed, would make him the most senior Iranian figure to die in the war since the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was killed on the first day of the war.
Also, Israel’s Defence Minister, Israel Katz, said a separate strike killed the Basij Paramilitary Force Commander, Gholamreza Soleimani, along with other senior Basij figures.
This is even as the United Nations warned yesterday that millions more people globally faced acute hunger if the US-Israel war on Iran, and its reverberations through Iran’s retaliation, continued through to June.
Meanwhile, a diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, Anwar Gargash, said that his country could join an international effort, led by the US, to ensure the safety and security of the Strait of Hormuz.
Speaking in an online event organised by the US think tank, Council on Foreign Relations, CFR, Gargash said the UAE did not currently have active talks with Iran.
Kent, meanwhile, in a resignation letter posted on X, posited that Iran posed no imminent threat to the US, saying he could not in good conscience support the ongoing war.
He referenced his wife’s death, saying she had been killed in a war “manufactured by Israel”.
He said: “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 pointed to Trump’s past pledges to end US engagement abroad, writing, “you understood that wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the previous lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation.”
“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,” he wrote.
In his resignation letter, Kent also echoed criticism lodged by several influential figures in Trump’s so-called “Make America Great Again” movement.
Many have condemned Trump for entering into the war with Iran despite campaign pledges to end long-term US military engagement and put America First.
Kent praised Trump’s past military actions, including the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in 2020, as examples of the president knowing “how to decisively apply military power without getting us drawn into “never-ending wars”.
Pivotal Iran leader Ali Larijani killed in airstrike — Israel
Israel said it has killed a linchpin of Iranian politics, the National Security chief, Ali Larijani, in overnight strikes.
Israel’s Defence Minister, Israel Katz, said a separate strike killed the Basij Paramilitary Force Commander, Gholamreza Soleimani, along with other senior Basij figures.
Iran has only confirmed the killing of Soleimani. If confirmed, Larijani’s death would remove a pivotal figure at the heart of the regime’s political and security establishment at a moment of acute crisis and represent devastating blow.
“Larijani and the Basij commander were eliminated overnight and joined the head of the annihilation programme, Khamenei, and all the eliminated members of the axis of evil, in the depths of hell,” Katz said.
Iranian state media published a handwritten note by Larijani, who was in effect leading the politics behind Iran’s war effort, commemorating sailors killed in a US attack whose funeral was expected yesterday, but it did not represent proof that he was alive, since it was most likely written before Israel bombed.
UN warns of record hunger, 45m more at risk, if Iran war continues
Warning of the impending hunger, UN said: “If the Middle East conflict continues through June, an additional 45 million people could be pushed into acute hunger by price rises,” Carl Skau, Deputy Executive Director of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), said.
“This would take global hunger levels to an all-time record, and it’s a terrible, terrible prospect,” Skau said, with 319 million people, already a historic high, currently acutely food insecure.
Skau said shipping costs are up 18 percent since the war began and that some have had to be rerouted.
The extra costs come on top of deep spending cuts by the WFP, as donors focus more on defence, he added.
VANGUARD.
