Trump’s former counterterrorism chief reveals who he blames for Iran war following shock resignation

Donald Trump's former counterterrorism chief has explained who he blames for the Iran war after announcing his resignation over it.

Until this week Joe Kent had been the Trump administration's director of the National Counterterrorism Centre before making the surprise announcement that he was resigning in protest at the US getting into a war with Iran.

Kent said he 'cannot in good conscience' support the war and in a statement posted on social media he made it clear where he thought the blame for the war came from.

He wrote: "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."

The former counterterrorism chief yesterday (18 March) told Tucker Carlson: "The Israelis drove the decision to take this action, which we knew would set off a series of events, meaning the Iranians would retaliate."

Joe Kent resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Centre this week in protest at the war with Iran (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Kent also claimed he'd had no intelligence that Iran had been developing a nuclear weapon, and in his resignation statement he compared going into Iran with 'the disastrous Iraq war' which lasted long after Saddam Hussein had been removed from power.

The latest war with Israel and the US against Iran started with the Americans and Israelis launching a series of strikes which killed the country's leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

At the time Israel's defence minister said they had launched a 'pre-emptive attack' against Iran, with their stated goal being to 'remove threats against the State of Israel'.

Since then there have been missile exchanges across the Middle East, with more Iranian officials killed in strikes and various other countries being targeted by Iran's retaliation which has resulted in travel disruption in the area.

The economic impact of the war is being felt around the world as well with the Strait of Hormuz which is vital for 20 percent of the global oil supply now one of the most dangerous shipping lanes in the world.

Kent blamed Israel for getting the US involved with the war and compared the situation to the long and bloody US involvement in Iraq (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)

Qatar's gas-producing Ras laffan industrial area is also being targeted for strikes.

As a result the price of many things is going to increase, and despite Trump's previous insistence that Iran has 'nothing left' and the war is 'very complete' that seems to be very far from the truth.

Trump has also flip-flopped on whether or not the US needs help, having said he didn't need countries joining in a war (which they hadn't offered to do) that was already won (which it hadn't been).

Since then he's been moaning that other countries won't help by sending their navies into the Strait of Hormuz,

Speaking about Kent's resignation, Trump said he thought the man his administration had put in charge of the National Counterterrorism Centre was 'weak on security'.

The US president said if there were people in his administration who didn't believe Iran was a threat then 'we don’t want those people'.

He said: "They’re not smart people, or they’re not savvy people. Iran was a tremendous threat."