Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced his immediate resignation yesterday. He is the first senior Trump administration official to step down in opposition to the Iran war.

“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. … I pray that you will reflect upon what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for.”
—Joe Kent (X.com, March 17)

Kent, a devout Roman Catholic, is expected to sit for an interview with popular podcaster Tucker Carlson, who has been outspoken against the Iran war and heavily critical of Israel. Carlson claims, “The United States didn’t make the decision here. Benjamin Netanyahu did.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to Kent’s resignation with a lengthy statement on X, rejecting Kent’s key assertion that Iran posed no imminent threat and emphasizing that it remains the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism. She described the suggestion that Israel had goaded President Trump into the war as “insulting and laughable.”

• Nevertheless, recent opinion polls indicate that while roughly 70 to 80 percent of Republicans support the U.S. attack on Iran, most Americans overall oppose it, and a significant minority believe that America gives too much support to Israel.

This indicates a notable shift in public sentiment.

A stunning prophecy fulfilled: The modern State of Israel came into being largely because Christians in the U.S. and Great Britain once felt a solemn biblical duty to help the Jewish people return to the Promised Land.

The late Herbert W. Armstrong explained this powerfully in his booklet The Proof of the Bible. He showed that God delivered Jerusalem from the Ottoman Turks on Dec. 9, 1917—exactly 2,520 years after Nebuchadnezzar formally accepted the surrender of the Jews in 604 b.c. This 2,520-year period (seven prophetic “times” of 360 days each, applied via the biblical day-for-a-year principle—Ezekiel 4:6) is a measure of divine punishment and restoration. (See Leviticus 26, Daniel 4, and Ezekiel 4:6.)

• Among the British soldiers who entered Jerusalem that historic day under Gen. Edmund Allenby was Lt. Col. William Gordon Mackendrick. He and others understood the profound truth that the peoples of America and Britain are, in large measure, the descendants of the “lost” Israelite tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim.
• God had promised that, after 2,520 years of national punishment, these birthright tribes would once again receive their inheritance and play a key role in world affairs. You can study these remarkable claims and the relevant sections of Scripture and historical events in Herbert W. Armstrong’s book The United States and Britain in Prophecy.

Tragically, the American and British peoples have largely forgotten these vital biblical truths. A 2024 survey of self-identified American Christians found that only about 40 percent still actively support the State of Israel. The remaining 60 percent increasingly resemble Joe Kent more than the Americans and British of the past. They hear the Iranian chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” yet they no longer feel any covenant responsibility to defend the Promised Land or stand with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, forgetting not only who the Jewish people are but who they are themselves.