Joe Kent, the Army Special Forces veteran who resigned as director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center in protest of the Iran war, said Monday that using American troops to escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz is a “reckless and frivolous gamble with American lives” and urged the United States to “end this war.” Kent made the remarks in a post on X at 9:16 a.m. on Sept. 28, 2026, hours after NBC News reported that eight U.S. Marines were injured in a previously undisclosed Iranian missile strike on a ship in the strait. He linked the NBC report in his post.
Kent’s Full Statement
Kent opened his post with a conditional, writing that the reported escort operations, if accurate, mark a shift in how U.S. forces are being used in the Gulf. He did not name the specific report he was reacting to beyond the NBC News article he attached. The full text of the post reads:
“If this report is true, it means we are using U.S. troops to escort oil tankers through the SOH, where oil had been flowing freely before we started this disastrous war of choice at the behest of the Israelis.
This a reckless and frivolous gamble with American lives, which we are foolishly opting to put at risk—not to thwart active terrorist threats to the homeland, but as an attempt to mitigate the damage we inflicted on ourselves & the global economy.
Attaching U.S. military personnel to civilian ships makes those ships legitimate targets. This increases the threat level for all vessels and adds an even risker layer of complexity to the already challenging conditions we created in the SOH.
It’s time to walk away now. End this war—any effort to use military force to secure a “win” will not have a meaningful lasting impact. It’s not worth the cost to our troops or inviting further escalation in this foolish war.”
The NBC News Report Kent Linked
The article Kent attached, written by NBC News correspondent Courtney Kube and published Sept. 27, reported that eight U.S. Marines were injured two weeks earlier when an Iranian cruise missile struck the ship they were operating on in the Strait of Hormuz, according to three U.S. officials. The report said the Marines were not seriously injured but suffered smoke inhalation and possibly traumatic brain injuries, with concussion symptoms such as headaches.
According to follow-up coverage of the NBC report, seven of the Marines were enlisted and one was an officer, all part of a battalion landing team, and all returned to duty soon after the Sept. 14 attack. The officials said the vessel was not a U.S. Navy ship and declined to identify its type, and U.S. Central Command declined to comment.
The Pentagon did not announce the strike when it happened. The eight Marines were added to the Defense Department’s casualty database nearly 10 days after the attack, and a U.S. official attributed the delay to symptoms that can appear later and to the system’s lack of real-time updates. Pentagon data showed 861 U.S. service members had been injured in the war as of Wednesday.
A Career Built in Combat
Kent’s warning carries the weight of a long combat record. He served in Army Special Forces, completed 11 combat deployments over a 20-year career, and later worked at the CIA. He retired from the Army in 2018 and left CIA contracting in 2019 after his wife, Navy intelligence officer Shannon Kent, was killed in an ISIS bombing in Syria. After her death he became an outspoken critic of the war on terror.
Kent later entered politics, running unsuccessfully for Congress in Washington state in 2022 and 2025 with Trump’s backing. He was confirmed as NCTC director last July on a 52-44 Senate vote, placing him in charge of the agency responsible for analyzing and detecting terrorist threats to the United States.
The Resignation
Kent left the administration on March 17, less than three weeks after the U.S. and Israel began striking Iran on Feb. 28. He posted his resignation letter on X, writing that he “cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.” In the letter he argued that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States and that the war was started under pressure from Israel and its American lobby. Al Jazeera noted that imminence is generally treated as a prerequisite for a president to launch military action without congressional approval, which made Kent’s wording significant.
In the same letter, Kent told Trump that he understood until June 2025 that wars in the Middle East were a trap that cost American lives and drained national wealth. Fox News reported that the reference appeared to point to Operation Midnight Hammer, the June 2025 U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
President Donald Trump responded the same day. He told reporters he had always thought Kent was “very weak on security,” and said it was “a good thing that he’s out.” The White House said the president had compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the U.S. first.
Days later, Kent spoke at a Washington prayer event. He said he could not, in good conscience, “send young men and women off to die on foreign battlefields.”
From Closed Strait to Escort Operations
The Strait of Hormuz became the central flashpoint of the war almost immediately. About 20 million barrels of oil moved through the strait each day before the war, and Iran effectively shut the waterway in retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli attacks. In early March, the White House said the Navy had not escorted any tanker, after the Energy Secretary posted and deleted a claim that it had. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called escorts “an option.”
By September, escorts were a routine part of the campaign. On Sept. 1, U.S. forces escorted 40 commercial vessels carrying about 18 million barrels of oil, a wartime high, while striking nearly 60 Iranian military targets near the waterway, according to two U.S. officials. Trump declared, “We now control the Strait of Hormuz,” while Tehran rejected the claim and said the strait would stay restricted until the U.S. meets conditions tied to a June interim deal.
On Sept. 6, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Navy escorts were essential to sustaining crude flows and suggested they would not end soon, adding that “the United States Navy is winning that battle.” Independent data has complicated the picture. Al Jazeera reported that Trump said about 30 ships cross daily under U.S. help, while ship-tracking data suggested fewer.
Diplomacy Stalled as Risks Mount
The NBC report arrived amid a diplomatic standoff. Days earlier, Iran proposed reopening the strait and resuming nuclear talks, and Trump rejected the plan, saying “we’re winning tremendously.” CENTCOM has maintained that Iran does not control the strait, pointing to thousands of ships and more than a billion barrels of oil that have passed through in recent months.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Sunday that he and President Masoud Pezeshkian “did not come to New York to sell a war” but “to forge peace.” A U.S. official told i24NEWS that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are still trying to target ships in the region almost daily.