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The United States (U.S.) Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has dismissed claims made by Joseph Kent, the former director of the US National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC), regarding the Iran war.
Kent, who resigned on Tuesday, said that the war started “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.
He said the war was of no benefit to Americans, while criticising the United States for leading misinformation campaigns, which, according to him, drew the U.S. into unnecessary conflicts.
President Donald Trump had accused Iran of building nuclear weapons and called the February 28 airstrikes “preemptive”, but the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said its observers found no evidence of Trump’s claims.
Kent added that Trump deceived Americans into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to them.
Leavitt, in a post shared on X, described Kent’s claims as false, adding that Trump had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first.
There are many false claims in this letter but let me address one specifically: that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation.”
This is the same false claim that Democrats and some in the liberal media have been repeating over and over.
As President Trump has clearly and… https://t.co/AC8M5L8lye
— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) March 17, 2026
“This evidence was compiled from many sources and factors. President Trump would never make the decision to deploy military assets against a foreign adversary in a vacuum. Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The Iranian regime is evil. It proudly killed Americans, waged war against our country, and openly threatened us all the way up to the launch of Operation Epic Fury,” Leavitt wrote.
“Iran was aggressively expanding their short-range ballistic missiles to combine with their naval assets to give itself immunity, meaning it would have a degree of capabilities that would give it immunity to hold the rest of the world hostage, including us.”
According to the Press Secretary, Trump gave Iran multiple opportunities to abandon their nuclear weapon ambitions in exchange for partnerships, but the country declined the offer.
Iran had, however, said that the United States and Israel launched airstrikes against it while negotiations were ongoing.
Leavitt added that Trump made the decision to attack Iran to address this imminent threat to America’s national security interests, to prevent the country from attacking the U.S. first, and to act in the best interest of the U.S.
