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From Fatwa to Conspiracy: Joe Kent’s Iran Case Falls Apart
Smoke billows from Jebel Ali port after an Iranian attack, following United States and Israel strikes on Iran, United Arab Emirates, March 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Amr Alfik
Joe Kent chose a revealing place to begin his claim that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States.
Sitting across from Tucker Carlson, Kent pointed to the Islamic Republic’s supposed “fatwa” against nuclear weapons — offering it as proof that Iran could be trusted to stop short of the bomb.
That argument collapses on contact with reality.
Setting aside that this so-called fatwa is unwritten and, by Iran’s own officials’ admission, not legally binding, no country builds deeply buried, hardened nuclear facilities under mountains — for civilian energy. No country enriches uranium to 60% for peaceful use. And once enrichment reaches that level, the remaining step to weapons-grade is short — measured at most in weeks, and in some scenarios just a few days. That is the baseline assessment across the nonproliferation community.
Iran has not hidden this trajectory. It has advanced it.
By early 2026, Iran had accumulated significant quantities of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade while making clear — publicly and in negotiations — that it would neither dismantle that stockpile nor include its ballistic missile program in any agreement. That is not restraint. It is leverage.
Kent’s claim of no “imminent” threat depends on a definition no serious military or intelligence body uses. Imminence is not measured by whether a missile has been launched, but how quickly one can be.
A regime able to move from threshold capability to a nuclear weapon on short notice — and already building delivery systems — is not a distant concern.
And Iran’s missile program was central to that threat.
Before late February 2026, Iran fielded the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East, and was expanding it. Missiles are relatively fast and inexpensive to produce. Interceptors are not. Systems like Arrow, David’s Sling, and Patriot require time, precision manufacturing, and far greater cost. Over time, the imbalance becomes structural.
That is how defenses are overwhelmed — through volume.
The implications extend far beyond Israel.
A nuclear-threshold Iran positioned along the Strait of Hormuz would sit at one of the world’s most critical chokepoints, through which roughly 20% of global oil flows. Combined with nuclear latency, a large missile force, and an entrenched proxy network, an Iranian regime aligned squarely with Russia and China would gain the ability to threaten energy markets, impose itself on neighboring states, and distort the global economy without firing a shot.
Any serious “America First” analysis would start there. Kent’s does not.
Instead, to argue the US is acting “for Israel,” he defaults to a familiar trope: that Israel “duped” the United States into the 2003 Iraq war.
This is not serious history. It is a recycled narrative common to both the antisemitic far-right and far-left, serving the same purpose: removing American agency and replacing it with manipulation by Israel or “the Jews.”
The record is clear.
Before 2003, Israeli leadership warned that Iran — not Iraq — posed the greater long-term threat. The intelligence cited by the Bush administration to support attacking Iraq came primarily from American and British sources. Colin Powell’s UN presentation relied on Western intelligence, not Israeli briefings.
Reducing that war to Israeli influence is not analysis. It is conspiracy theory.
Kent did not stop there.
In his resignation letter, he blamed Israel for the death of his first wife.
But Shannon Kent was killed in Syria while serving as a US intelligence officer. The war she died in was the Syrian Civil War — triggered by Assad’s mass violence, fueled by ISIS, and sustained in large part by Iran through the IRGC and Hezbollah. Iran helped keep that war going.
Blaming Israel for that is not a misreading. It is counterfactual scapegoating.
And it follows a pattern.
Kent has been elevated in a media ecosystem built on distrust of institutions and hostility to alliances, increasingly drifting into the claim that American policy is not the product of American decisions, but of outside (Jewish) forces pulling the strings. During his Carlson interview, Kent nodded toward the worst conspiracies circulating in that space — including claims popularized by Candace Owens about Charlie Kirk and Israel — while Carlson played his familiar role of laundering them through “just asking questions.”
That ecosystem runs on repetition, not evidence.
Kent’s description to Carlson of Ali Larijani as a moderate reflects a similar disregard for facts. Larijani spent decades at the center of the Islamic Republic — serving as nuclear negotiator, parliament speaker, and senior regime figure — in a system that imprisons, tortures, and mass-murders its own citizens. There is nothing moderate about that record.
Then there is the timing of Kent’s resignation, which followed reports that he was under investigation for leaking classified information. That context matters. It makes the letter read less like principle and more like preemption.
It also exposes a deeper inconsistency.
Kent and his cohorts argue that confronting Iran plainly serves Israel’s interests more than America’s — as if that ends the analysis. The same argument was made before World War II: that aiding Britain served British, not American, interests. And Britain was certainly more immediately threatened by Nazi Germany. That did not make defeating Nazi Germany any less an American interest.
An action benefiting an ally more than it does America can still be plainly in America’s interest.
Yet in the same media space elevating Kent, figures once widely condemned — including Marjorie Taylor Greene — find new audiences when their conspiratorial instincts align with the moment. The consistency is not ideological. It is to support a narrative: America as manipulated, its institutions as compromised, and its citizens as spectators.
That has consequences.
A self-governing society depends on the belief that its policies reflect its own decisions. Convince people that unseen forces are always in control, and participation begins to erode.
If the United States can be “duped” into war by a far smaller ally, then voting, deliberation, and leadership become performative. The system is hollow.
That is not a side effect. It is the destination.
And it is why the facts about Iran matter. Iran’s nuclear program, its proximity to breakout, its expanding missile arsenal, its declared “death to America” hostility toward the United States, its role in the deaths of hundreds of American service members, and its alignment with Russia and China are not speculative. They are established facts.
Dismissing that record requires more than disagreement. It requires dismissing facts.
At that point, the argument is no longer about Iran.
It is about whether facts still matter — and whether a society that decides they do not can continue to govern itself at all.
That is the direction parts of the “woke right” and the far-left are now pushing — different rhetoric, same conclusion: America is not acting, it is being controlled; its people are not deciding, they are being managed or “duped.” Tucker Carlson says it one way. Cenk Uygur says it another. The message lands the same.
A country that internalizes that message does not remain self-governing. It hollows out from within.
And when that happens, the beneficiaries are clear: Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran — regimes that do not need to defeat the United States if Americans can be convinced to lose faith in their own capacity to govern.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.
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Ukraine Has ‘Irrefutable’ Evidence of Russia Providing Intelligence to Iran, Zelenskiy Says
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends a press conference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (not pictured) and European Council President Antonio Costa (not pictured) on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
Ukraine‘s military intelligence has “irrefutable” evidence that Russia continues to provide intelligence to Iran, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after meeting the head of military intelligence.
“Russia is using its own signals intelligence and electronic intelligence capabilities, as well as part of the data obtained through cooperation with partners in the Middle East,” he said on X.
Kremlin last week dismissed a Wall Street Journal report that Russia was sharing satellite imagery and improved drone technology with Iran as “fake news.”
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Belgium Deploys Soldiers to Reinforce Security at Jewish Sites
Belgian army personnel patrol a street as part of a deployment of soldiers outside Jewish institutions in Antwerp and Brussels following attacks at Jewish sites in Belgium and other European countries, in Antwerp, Belgium, March 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Soldiers were deployed on the streets of leading Belgian cities on Monday to bolster security for the Jewish community, after what officials said were antisemitic attacks in Belgium and the Netherlands.
The move follows an explosion this month at a synagogue in Liege that authorities called an antisemitic act.
“From today we’re putting soldiers back on the streets in Brussels and Antwerp because safety is a basic right,” Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken said in a post on X on Monday.
The deployment, in collaboration with federal police, will provide security at Jewish sites including synagogues and schools, Belgian authorities said in a press release last week.
Antwerp “is again a little safer … the Jewish community too. We say NO to antisemitism!” Francken said on Monday.
The upgrade in security also follows an arson attack on a synagogue in Rotterdam and an explosion at a Jewish school in Amsterdam in neighbouring The Netherlands.
Dutch police have arrested five suspects, aged 17 to 19, over the synagogue attack in Rotterdam.
The US embassy in Oslo was also targeted in a bombing earlier this month branded by Norwegian investigators as an act of terrorism. None of the attacks caused injuries.
A Belgian defense ministry spokesperson said on Monday that soldiers would be deployed in three different phases: First in Brussels and Antwerp, later in Liege.
Rights advocates have raised concerns about possible attacks against Jewish communities around the world following the launch of the US and Israeli war with Iran. Four ambulances belonging to a Jewish community organisation in north London were set ablaze on Monday.
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Trump Puts Off Threat to Bomb Iran Power Grid; Tehran Denies Talks Taking Place
Streaks of light illuminate the sky during an interception attempt amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, as seen from Tel Aviv, Israel, March 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
US President Donald Trump said on Monday he had given orders to postpone for five days the attacks he had threatened against Iranian power plants, and said the US was in talks with Tehran about ending the US-Israeli war on Iran.
However, Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, mooted to be the leader representing Iran in contacts with the US, posted on social media that no talks had been held with the US.
As reciprocal airstrikes continued, financial markets had broadly welcomed the reports of efforts to negotiate an end to the war. Even after Qalibaf’s comments, the Brent crude oil benchmark was down around 8% to about $103 a barrel.
Iran has effectively closed the key Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas flows.
Trump wrote early in the US morning on his Truth Social platform that the US and Iran had had “very good and productive” conversations over the past two days about a “complete and total resolution of hostilities in the Middle East.”
OIL DROPS, STOCKS RECOVER ON PROSPECT OF PEACE TALKS
He later told reporters that his special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who had been negotiating with Iran before the war, had had discussions with a top Iranian official into the evening on Sunday, and would continue on Monday.
“We have had very, very strong talks. We’ll see where they lead. We have major points of agreement, I would say, almost all points of agreement.”
“All I’m saying is, we are in the throes of a real possibility of making a deal,” he told reporters before departing Florida for Memphis.
He declined to say who the US was speaking to in Iran but said it was not Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who was wounded in the Israeli attack at the start of the war that killed his father and predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to Washington.
“We’re dealing with the man who I believe is the most respected and the leader,” Trump said.
An unnamed Israeli official and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters that Qalibaf, increasingly influential, was representing Iran and that talks on ending the war could be held in Islamabad as soon as this week.
A reporter for the US news outlet Axios also said mediating countries, which he named as Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan, were trying to convene an Iranian-US meeting in Islamabad this week including Witkoff, Kushner, and Vice President JD Vance.
Trump said he had spoken with Israel, which he said would be “very happy with what we have.”
Although Mojtaba Khamenei holds the ultimate authority in Iran, and the foreign ministry led past negotiations with the US, Iran experts say the realities of wartime decision-making have effectively shifted control to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which now exerts decisive influence over key areas including foreign policy.
A source briefed on Israel’s war plans said Washington had kept it informed of its contacts with Tehran, and that Israel was likely to follow Washington in suspending any targeting of Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on talks or on Washington’s decision to suspend strikes on some targets.
Global markets rose sharply, with US stocks up more than 2%.
On Saturday, Trump had warned that Iranian power plants would be destroyed if Tehran failed to “fully open” the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping within 48 hours. Trump set a deadline of around 7:44 pm EDT (2344 GMT) on Monday.
The IRGC threatened retaliation, saying it would attack Israel’s power plants and those supplying US bases if Trump followed through with his threat.
MARKETS AND ECONOMIES IN TURMOIL
Iranian media reported that they had on Monday attacked targets in Israel and US bases in the region.
More than 2,000 people have been killed in the war the US and Israel launched on Feb. 28, which has devastated Iran’s leadership and military capabilities while driving up fuel costs and accelerating global inflation fears.
However, the threat of strikes on Gulf electricity grids raised fears of mass disruption to desalination for drinking water, and further rattled oil markets.
While attacks on electricity could hurt Iran, they could be catastrophic for its Gulf neighbors, which consume around five times as much power per capita.
Electricity makes their gleaming desert cities habitable, in part by powering the desalination plants that produce 100% of the water consumed in Bahrain and Qatar. Such plants use seawater to meet more than 80% of drinking water needs in the United Arab Emirates, and 50% of the water supply in Saudi Arabia.
Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said the resulting energy crisis was worse than the two oil shocks of the 1970s and the gas shortage connected to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine put together.
Iran‘s Defense Council escalated its threatened retaliation on Monday, prior to Trump‘s delay, saying Tehran would cut all Gulf routes by laying sea mines if Trump followed through, state media reported.
The Israeli military said early on Monday it had begun its latest broad wave of strikes on infrastructure in Tehran.
Iranian news agencies said six people had been killed and 43 injured in strikes in the western city of Khorramabad.
The Iranian Red Crescent posted a video of a residential building in affluent northern Tehran with most of its facade destroyed and emergency staff rescuing someone on a stretcher from the upper floors.
Across the Gulf, the Saudi defense ministry said two ballistic missiles had been launched towards Riyadh. One was intercepted while the other fell in an uninhabited area.