US President-elect Donald Trump is considering nominating Joe Kent as the next head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Politico reported this week, citing two sources, a move that could see another senior Trump official advocating for a reduced military footprint in the Middle East.
The choice of Kent, a right-wing former congressional candidate, would be another major shakeup for Trump’s national security and foreign policy, following his nominations for Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence and Elbridge Colby for a top policy post in the Pentagon.
One person familiar with the matter told Politico that Kent “understands the need for homeland protection and will be a supportive partner to Tulsi as she tries to reorient the intelligence enterprise to meet today’s current threats”.
Kent has been publicly vocal about his views on foreign policy regarding the Middle East and has called on the US to withdraw its forces from the region.
In a podcast interview last year, the former CIA officer criticised the Biden administration for leaving US troops in the Middle East amid the Israeli war on Gaza, saying that the troops were being left as “bait” for Iranian-backed groups to attack.
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“We’ve gotta get serious, and we’ve gotta just get our troops out of there,” Kent said in a podcast in response to a question about an attack on US forces at a base in Jordan – an attack conducted by Iran-aligned paramilitaries in Iraq.
“This idea that we’re going to escalate the war further by directly going to war with Iran, like Lindsey Graham and some of the other neocons are advocating, that’s incredibly dangerous as well.”
In a policy paper Kent wrote in 2020, he argued that the US should not be engaged in its ongoing counterterrorism missions aimed at countering the Islamic State militant group, noting that the Trump administration had declared the IS group territorially defeated in 2019.
“The post 9/11 wars are no longer effective because they deviated from locating and crushing terrorists who pose a threat to the US homeland, into ill-defined costly efforts to build nations,” Kent wrote.
“America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan attrited the US of lives, resources and the national will to fight while diverting attention from strategic threats, namely, Russia and China.”
Kent, a former CIA officer and retired Green Beret, previously ran an unsuccessful bid for a Washington state congressional seat with a hardline Make America Great Again campaign. US media reports in 2022 raised concerns about Kent’s campaign, which had links to white nationalist groups like the Proud Boys.
Trump’s vow to end Middle East wars
The president-elect ran his successful presidential campaign with a promise to end conflict in the Middle East. Even before entering office, he was quick to take credit for the ceasefire deal that was agreed to by Hamas and Israel, a war that has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians and destroyed much of the Palestinian enclave’s civilian infrastructure.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani credited Trump’s pick for Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, in his speech announcing the ceasefire.
And while some of Trump’s choices for top policy posts have been leading neoconservative politicians like Marco Rubio, he has also nominated several lower-profile individuals who have advocated for an anti-interventionist foreign policy.
The choice of Kent for the head of the National Counterterrorism Center follows Trump’s nomination of Colby, a former Trump official who has called for reducing American troops in the Middle East and against striking Iranian nuclear facilities.
Trump’s nomination of Colby was in contrast to some of his other picks for national security, defence and diplomatic positions, who are more hawkish when it comes to foreign policy, like his choice for secretary of state, Rubio.
Colby has written publicly about his foreign policy priorities and has often commented on where he believes Washington should prioritise its national security and military agenda. That focus, according to Colby, should be on China, not the Middle East.
“The United States must limit much more substantially its strategic engagement in the Middle East. This is both necessary and feasible,” Colby said in an essay he co-wrote in 2021.
“The Middle East, as a whole, is relatively unimportant; its proportion of global GDP is significantly less than 10 percent.”
One exception for both Colby and Kent, however, is Israel. Both have emphasised that US priorities in the region include guaranteeing the security of Israel.
