Joe Kent, the former National Counterterrorism Center director who resigned from the Trump administration last month in protest over Iran, spent his weekend amplifying Iranian state media claims that the United States was deliberately trying to kill its own stranded airman.
Hours later, President Trump revealed the crewman had been rescued in a daring operation behind enemy lines.
The timing was devastating. According to the New York Post, Kent shared an article from a pro-regime Iranian outlet that claimed the Trump administration had "lost hope" of finding the American soldier and was actively bombing the area where the missing airman was believed to be, not to protect him, but to kill him before Iranian forces could capture him. It was, by any measure, enemy propaganda designed to undermine American morale and fracture domestic support for the operation. Kent handed it a megaphone.
CNN's Jake Tapper posted on X, calling out Kent's signal boost of the Iranian narrative:
"Former National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent sharing Iranian state-linked outlet nonsense claiming, falsely, that the US was trying to kill the then-lost US pilot."
Tapper added that the post "aged rather poorly, I think it's fair to say."
It's an uncomfortable position for any conservative to be in: giving Jake Tapper, of all people, a clean shot. But Kent walked into it. When you circulate an enemy government's information operation accusing the American military of trying to murder its own service member, you don't get to complain when people notice.
Kent fired back on Monday, accusing Tapper and other media outlets of working to "promote this foolish war & attack anyone who points out how this war isn't in our nation's interest." He urged people to "read independent media, Iranian media & US media," and to "always question those cheering on wars & always pray for our troops."
The instinct to question official narratives is a healthy one. Reading broadly, including adversarial sources, can be a tool of serious analysis. But there is a canyon between reading Iranian state media critically and sharing its most incendiary claims to your audience without caveat. At the same time, an American soldier's life hangs in the balance. Kent did the latter.
Kent made headlines last month when he sensationally resigned from the Trump administration in protest over Iran. His stated reasoning was blunt: he said he could not in "good conscience" continue serving. He declared that "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."
That framing tells you where Kent has landed. It's a position that borrows more from Mearsheimer seminars and fringe isolationist corners of the internet than from any recognizable conservative foreign policy tradition. There are serious, principled debates to be had about the scope of American military engagement. Kent isn't having one. He's running an information operation of his own, and he's sourcing it from Tehran.
President Trump later insisted he always thought Kent was "weak on security." Given what followed Kent's departure, it's hard to argue with the assessment.
While Kent was busy lending credibility to Iranian propaganda, the actual story unfolding was one of extraordinary courage. An American service member was stranded. The administration mounted a rescue operation behind enemy lines. It succeeded.
That's the story. An American came home.
Kent's 11 combat tours earn him genuine respect for his service. No one can take that from him. But a service record is not a permanent shield against criticism, and it does not transform Iranian regime talking points into credible analysis. A man who held one of the most sensitive counterterrorism positions in the United States government should understand, better than almost anyone, what state propaganda looks like and why amplifying it costs American lives.
There is a growing tendency in some corners of the right to treat any skepticism of American military action as inherently virtuous, regardless of source. Questioning a war is not the same as laundering enemy propaganda. Opposing intervention is not the same as echoing a hostile regime's claim that the U.S. military tried to assassinate its own pilot.
These distinctions matter. Conservatives have always understood that a strong national defense requires public trust, and that adversarial governments work around the clock to erode it. Iran doesn't publish English-language propaganda because it cares about American public discourse. It publishes it to fracture American resolve. When Americans with large platforms and former security clearances share that material uncritically, the fracture widens.
Kent wants to be seen as a truth-teller standing against the establishment. But a truth-teller who sources his truth from the Iranian regime's press office isn't speaking truth. He's being used.
Somewhere, an American airman is alive because the people Kent accused of trying to kill him went in and brought him home.