Joe Kent, who until last week led the United States' National Counterterrorism Center, told Megyn Kelly on camera that all 18 American intelligence agencies had reached the same conclusion before the Iran war escalated: Iran was not working towards a nuclear weapon. The admission — made during an appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM — has since been widely circulated online, with commentator Brian Allen posting a thread on X that laid out what the intelligence community reportedly said versus the case made to justify the conflict.
'When you have the 18 intelligence agencies saying without a doubt that Iran is not working towards a nuclear weapon and the Defense Intelligence Agency doing battle damage assessment... that's what I'm going to go with,' Kent said on air. He went further, describing the process behind that consensus as exhaustive: 'Getting the 18 intelligence agencies to agree on anything is very challenging. It is a very laborious and sometimes a very intense process of coordination and having people argue their cases.'
