The resignation of Joe Kent, a senior counter-terrorism official who spoke out against the US war in Iran, took a dramatic turn on Wednesday with a report that he is under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) over an alleged leak of classified information.

The inquiry predates Kent’s departure on Tuesday from his post as director of the national counterterrorism center, where he had overseen the analysis of terrorist threats, according to Semafor and CBS News. The FBI declined to comment on the existence of any such investigation.

The report came as Kent, the first senior member of the administration to quit over the war, gave his first media interview since stepping down. Speaking to the rightwing commentator Tucker Carlson, he claimed that dissenting voices were effectively frozen out of the decision-making process that led to US airstrikes on Iran on 28 February.

“A good deal of key decision makers were not allowed to come and express their opinion to the president,” Kent said on The Tucker Carlson Show podcast. “There wasn’t a robust debate.”

Wearing a blue-checked shirt open at the collar, Kent, a staunch Trump ally and conspiracy theorist, appeared at pains to not criticize the president directly. But he painted a picture of a White House in which Trump relied on a tight inner circle of advisers, sidelining officials who questioned both the intelligence and the strategic wisdom underpinning the strikes.

Kent insisted that there was no evidence that Iran was close to gaining a nuclear weapon or posed an imminent threat to the US. “There was no intelligence that said, ‘Hey, on whatever day it was, March 1st, the Iranians are going to launch this big sneak attack – they’re going to do some kind of a 9/11, Pearl Harbor, et cetera, they are going to attack one of our bases.’ There was none of that intelligence.”

Instead, Kent alleged, Trump’s hand was effectively forced by Israel. “The Israelis drove the decision to take this action,” he said, claiming that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials lobbied the president with claims that did not align with established intelligence channels.

Kent added: “I know how this works. I know the Israeli officials – some in intelligence, some in government – will come to US government officials and they will say all kinds of things that we know from our intelligence just simply isn’t true. They’ll say, hey, I’m giving you a preview, it’s not in intelligence channels yet, but here’s what’s gonna happen, and that doesn’t usually come to fruition.”

Such remarks have drawn swift condemnation in some quarters, with critics arguing that references to an “Israeli lobby” veer into offensive tropes. Carlson has come under similar scrutiny, notably after previously interviewing the antisemitic activist Nick Fuentes.

Kent, who did not specify who blocked his access to the president, also cited comments by secretary of state Marco Rubio and House of Representatives speaker Mike Johnson as indicative of Israel’s influence over the timing of the strikes.

But he noted that the US and Israel have divergent goals. “Most folks right now at the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, they would say, us and the Israelis actually have a different objective here.

“I don’t believe that our objective has been clearly defined because we’re shying away from regime change. The Israelis are not shying from regime change. They want to knock out, lock, stock and barrel the current government. They don’t seem to have a plan for what comes next. “

Kent told Carlson that he decided to resign after it became obvious that his concerns would be ignored. “I know this path that we’re on, it doesn’t work,” he said. “I can’t be a part of this in good conscience.”

As a Green Beret, Kent saw combat in 11 deployments before retiring to join the CIA. He also endured tragedy: His wife, a Navy cryptologist, was killed by a suicide bomber in 2019 in Syria, leaving him with two young sons. Kent, 45, has since remarried.

Kent’s work at the National Counterterrorism Center was overseen by director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who on Wednesday said it was up to Trump — and Trump alone — to decide whether Iran posed a threat.

Gabbard, a veteran and former congresswoman from Hawaii, previously criticized talk of military strikes in Iran. She has not said what she thinks of the current strikes and a spokesperson has declined to respond to questions.

The White House pushed back forcefully when Kent resigned. Trump dismissed him as “weak on security”, insisting that Iran represented “a tremendous threat” and suggesting that those who disagreed lacked judgement. “If somebody didn’t think it was a threat, we don’t want those people,” he said.