Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned over his opposition to the Iran war, shared a post on social media spreading false claims from Iranian state-linked media and Drop Site News that the U.S. was attempting to kill the servicemember whose fighter jet was shot down over Iran over the weekend prior to him being rescued. 

The initial statement on Saturday from Drop Site, a far-left news outlet sympathetic to Hamas and totalitarian regimes, cited a report by Tasnim News, which is linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, claiming that the U.S. had “lost hope” of recovering an airman whose jet was downed over Iran on Friday and was instead “attempting to kill him.” 

The post was then amplified by Kent with the message: “Praying for the rescue of our downed pilot & the safe return of our Special Operators going in to get him back. [U.S. Air Force Pararescuemen and Combat Search and Rescue] Air crews are top notch.” 

The Iranian-state media claim reposted by Kent came a day before President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that the lost crew member had been rescued following what he hailed as a “daring” operation by U.S. forces to retrieve him — contradicting the claim that Washington had been attempting to bomb and kill the missing servicemember. 

In his post on Truth Social, Trump said that the servicemember’s location was being monitored “24 hours a day,” adding that the U.S. was “diligently planning for his rescue.”

Kent initially resigned from his post in March over the war in Iran, claiming that Tehran posed “no imminent threat to our nation” and accusing the U.S. of starting the war “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”