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Former Director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent. Credit: Jenny Kane\/AP<\/p>\nFormer Trump administration counterterrorism chief Joe Kent said in an interview Wednesday, just one day after resigning from his role, that there was \u201cno intelligence\u201d that Iran was going to launch a \u201cbig sneak attack\u201d akin to 9\/11 or Pearl Harbor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no intelligence that said, \u2018hey, on whatever day it was, March 1, the Iranians are going to launch this big sneak attack, they\u2019re going to do some kind of a 9\/11, Pearl Harbor, etc. They\u2019re going to attack one of our bases\u2019,\u201d Kent told conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was none of that intelligence.<\/p>\n
\u201cAgain, back to what we know about the Iranians. They\u2019re very, very deliberate with the escalation ladder.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went on to claim the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had been moderating the country\u2019s nuclear program ahead of his death.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m no fan of the former supreme leader, you know, Ali Khamenei, however, he was moderating their nuclear program,\u201d Kent said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was preventing them from getting a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you take him out, if you kill him aggressively, people are going to rally around that regime.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked by Carlson if Iran was on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon, Kent replied, \u201cNo, they weren\u2019t,\u201d before adding that Iran\u2019s strategy was \u201cnot to completely abandon the nuclear program.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kent announced Tuesday that he was resigning from the administration due to disagreements over the Iran war.<\/p>\n
The White House has repeatedly cited an \u201cimminent nuclear threat\u201d posed by Iran as an impetus for launching strikes against the country.<\/p>\n
Former Director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent. Credit: Jenny Kane\/AP<\/p>\n
– CNN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Trump administration counterterrorism chief Joe Kent said in an interview Wednesday, just one day after resigning from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[255657,2490,43,5575,6897,12241,44,84,41,39,42,40,255658],"class_list":["post-549479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-conflict-and-war","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}