Bongino fires back at Joe Kent's claim Iran posed 'no imminent threat' to US
Top Trump intel official resigned Tuesday claiming US started conflict due to pressure from Israel and its lobby
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino pushed back forcefully Tuesday against former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent’s claim that Iran posed no imminent threat, arguing that the intelligence told a very different story.
"I don't know at what point you thought this wasn't an imminent threat after you've read a lot of the stuff I read, [and] by the way, that's just the open store stuff we can talk about on the air," Bongino said on "The Ingraham Angle."
"The president, I promise you, has a bevy of material that… if he told you right now, you would come to the imminent threat conclusion in a snap."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Kent resigned Tuesday in protest of the war with Iran, writing on X that he believed the U.S. started the conflict "due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby" and that he could not support the effort "in good conscience."
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Dan Bongino, left, at Fox News Channel Studios on June 18, 2019, in New York City; Former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Joseph Kent, right, testifies before the House Committee on Homeland Security in the Cannon House Office Building on Dec. 11, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Roy Rochlin/Getty Images; Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
His claim that Iran posed "no imminent threat" to the U.S. drew ire from other Trump administration officials, including the president himself, who fired back against the claim in the Oval Office on Tuesday.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"When somebody is working with us that says they didn't think Iran was a threat: We don't want those people…" President Donald Trump said.
"Iran was a tremendous threat, and virtually every NATO nation agreed," he concluded.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}President Donald Trump takes questions from reporters during a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin in the Oval Office of the White House, on St. Patrick's Day, Tuesday, Mar. 17, in Washington, D.C. (Alex Brandon/AP Photo)
Bongino fired back against Kent's claim that Israel and its lobby were a major culprit.
"I read probably a lot more intelligence than he did, because they don't have a law enforcement function [at] the National Counterterrorism Center. They're an analytical clearinghouse," he said.
"They're valuable. However, I had access to just about everything, and how you could come to the conclusion that the Israelis did it and there was no imminent threat here… really?"
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Bongino listed reasons the regime posed a threat, including anti-ship ballistic missiles, its drone program, enriched nuclear material and its "death to America" chants.
"That's called evidence. In some limited circles, we call that a clue," he said.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Kent, a retired Green Beret who served in the Middle East, lost his first wife Shannon Kent, a Navy chief cryptologic technician, in an ISIS bombing in Syria in 2019.
He cited the potential loss of life as a driving factor behind his opposition to the current war in his resignation.
Fox News' Eric Mack contributed to this report.