Kash Patel Fired Entire Team of Iran Experts Right Before Trump’s War

Kash Patel baselessly fired an elite team of agents specializing in foreign threats from the Middle East just days before Donald Trump launched an illegal military campaign in Iran.

Patel terminated a dozen employees and staff after accusing them—without providing evidence—of improperly investigating Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence. The FBI director specifically gutted a group known as CI-12, a counterintelligence unit tasked with monitoring threats from Iran and its proxies. Days later, Trump toppled Iran’s regime and sparked a sprawling regional conflict in the Middle East.

The targeting of this global espionage team was first reported on by The New York Sun.

It’s not surprising that the members of CI-12 were involved in investigating Trump for holding onto classified documents after he left the White House in 2020. CI-12 is charged with media leaks and the mishandling of classified documents, and the documents found at Trump’s estate reportedly included U.S. military plans for Iran.

These latest firings have raised concerns that the U.S. will be unable to respond to threats as the United States and Israel engage in major combat operations in Iran. Nearly half of all working FBI agents have been reassigned to immigration enforcement, including those working in counterterrorism.

The terminations also occurred amid wider reductions in force and waves of resignations at the Department of Justice. The DOJ’s National Security Division—including the counterterrorism office—has already lost at least half of its workforce, people familiar with the matter told CNN.

Patel’s decision to terminate his elite experts on Iran is just one of many elements of Trump’s decision to take the U.S. into war that feels unplanned, and leaves Americans exposed.

Donald Trump really doesn’t have an Iran war plan, he told Congress on Monday. 

In a letter to Congress regarding the War Powers Resolution for Iran, Trump wrote, “Although the United States desires a quick and enduring peace, it is not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration of military operations that may be necessary.” This means that he has no idea how long the war will last and whether ground troops will be necessary. 

The letter goes on to outline the threat that the Trump administration claims Iran poses, from “ballistic, cruise, anti-ship, and other missiles” to its supposed efforts “to seek the means to possess and employ nuclear weapons.” According to Trump, the threat to the United States and its allies had become “untenable.” 

The letter avoids the shifting rationale given by White House officials since the weekend. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed Monday that the administration knew that Israel was going to strike, and “we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces.” Trump has claimed that the threat from Iran was imminent, but experts say he is exaggerating. 

The War Powers Resolution in question is spearheaded by Democratic Representative Ro Khanna and Republican Representative Thomas Massie in the House, with Senator Tim Kaine doing the same in the Senate. While Trump would almost certainly veto it if the bill ends up on his desk, it would be a rebuke for the president and would show that Congress is listening to what most Americans are saying, according to polls.  

The State Department has urged all Americans  in the Middle East to leave immediately, but U.S. embassies in the region are telling people trying to flee that they are on their own. 

U.S. allies within the region are at high risk of being targeted by Iranian missiles, with Iran strikes already occurring across Israel, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, after the joint attack by the United States and Israel last weekend. Meanwhile, Israel has bombed Lebanon. American civilians currently in those areas are being told that they’ll need to figure out their own evacuation plans without any help from their home country. 

On Tuesday, the U.S. shut down its embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait after Iranian attacks. 

“The U.S. Embassy is not in a position at this time to evacuate or directly assist Americans in departing Israel,” the U.S. Embassy in Israel posted Tuesday on X, instead telling them to check out the Israeli Ministry of Tourism’s shuttle. “The U.S. Embassy cannot make any recommendation (for or against) the Ministry of Tourism’s shuttle. If you choose to avail yourself of this option to depart, the U.S. government cannot guarantee your safety. The information is provided as a courtesy to those wishing to leave Israel.” 

The U.S. Embassy in Qatar said the same, stating that Americans there “not rely on the U.S. government for assisted departure or evacuation.” This has only increased the frantic nature of these evacuations, as demand for transportation skyrockets, prioritizing only those with enough funds and/or status to get out. 

“Called the State Department emergency number because the advisory said ‘depart via commercial means’ and to call if you need assistance arranging departure,” one X user wrote. “Airspace is shut. Airports aren’t functioning. Airlines can’t be reached. After 30 minutes on the line, they read back the same security update posted online.”

Americans from across the political spectrum sounded off on the abandonment of their fellow citizens in an active war zone.

“All those years demagoguing Benghazi and pretending to give a shit about Americans overseas, and now the White House starts a reckless war with Iran and tells everyone trying to escape the chaos that you’re on your own,” liberal podcaster Tommy Vietor said. 

“American tax payers are forced to give Israel $3.8 BILLION every single year, and here is our own U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem telling Americans good luck getting out, you are on your own,” former MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote. “The betrayal is unbelievable.”

President Donald Trump’s illegal war in Iran is so unpopular, his own former spokesperson is calling him out.

During an appearance on Fox News Monday night, Caroline Sunshine pointed to a statement from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine, who said that the United States could “expect to take additional losses” as it engaged in ongoing “major combat operations” in Iran.

“I voted for President Trump, and I worked for President Trump because I didn’t want to hear statements like that from my government again regarding American involvement in the Middle East,” Sunshine, who previously served as Trump’s deputy communications director, said.

Sunshine urged the Trump administration to be clear about their objectives for the military campaign, arguing that the president’s supporters did not support intervention in Iran.

“Are any of those objectives in the direct national interest of the United States and of the American people, or is this going to be another regime-change war that the American people rejected and did not vote for?” Sunshine said. “If they wanted that, they would not have voted for Donald Trump as many times as they have and put him in the Oval Office.”

She also called out the administration’s flimsy rationale for launching the strike in the first place.

“Six months ago, the American people were told that we used B2 bunker-buster bombs to completely obliterate and destroy Iran’s nuclear program, and anybody who said otherwise was fake news,” she said. “Now we’ve been told that we’ve—somehow in those six months they were able to restart the program—now we’re told that we’ve completely destroyed it again.”

The White House claimed to have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities in June, and as recently as last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that Iran was not currently enriching uranium. Meanwhile, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff claimed last month that Iran’s enrichment level had reached “60 percent.”

Sunshine noted that in addition to assassinating Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, the U.S. and Israeli strikes had wiped the chessboard of potential replacements and that Trump had indicated he was ceding power back to the people.

“If all of that has been done, why are we still there?” Sunshine asked. “Because we’ve lost six U.S. service members at our bases in the Middle East, and I don’t think the American people are going to have a very high tolerance for losing more U.S. soldiers unless those objectives are very clear, and those timelines are very clear, and it’s made clear how it is in the direct interest of the American people.”

A total of six U.S. military service members have died in a suspected drone strike on their makeshift operations center at a civilian port in Kuwait. There was no warning or siren to warn the officers of the oncoming attack, CNN reported Monday.

Meanwhile, the number of civilian deaths in Iran has surpassed 700, including dozens of school-age girls.

The Iran war could go on “forever”—if Donald Trump wanted it to.

In an ominous Truth Social post late Monday, the president suggested that U.S. munitions stockpiles could allow the fighting to stretch into eternity.

“The United States Munitions Stockpiles have, at the medium and upper medium grade, never been higher or better—As was stated to me today, we have a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons,” Trump wrote. “Wars can be fought ‘forever,’ and very successfully, using just these supplies (which are better than other countries finest arms!).

“At the highest end, we have a good supply, but are not where we want to be,” he added.

But that is not the Pentagon’s analysis. Speaking to The Washington Post Monday under the condition of anonymity, military officials stressed that just two days of fighting Iran had already drastically depleted America’s missile defense systems.

“There is concern about this lasting more than a few days,” one source told the Post, adding that it often takes several air defense interceptors to stop an incoming missile. “I don’t think people have fully absorbed yet, like, what that has done with stockpiles.”

Trump acknowledged the diminished reserves in his post, but claimed that there was “additional high grade weaponry … stored for us in outlying countries.” He also blamed the loss on former President Joe Biden and his decision to transfer military equipment to Ukraine, derisively referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as “P.T. Barnum.”

In the weeks leading up to the explosive hostilities, Trump’s top military adviser—Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine—warned the White House against such an attack, arguing that it could entangle America in a prolonged conflict. But the Oval Office disagreed.

“The idea that we’re going to be in a Middle Eastern war for years with no end in sight—there is no chance that will happen,” Vice President JD Vance told the Post late last month.

Despite his criticism of the offensive, Caine acquiesced to the president’s whims. Over the last month, he assembled the largest military presence in the Middle East since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, a hardware collection across a web of U.S. bases that includes numerous ships—including naval destroyers and aircraft carriers—and more than a dozen jets in the region, reported CNN.

So far, six U.S. soldiers have been killed in the conflict, as have more than 20 Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Eighteen American soldiers have also been seriously injured. More than 700 Iranian civilians have been killed, including 176 children, dozens of whom were at a girls’ school in the country’s south.