Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel said he doesn’t believe in a US war with Iran and doesn’t believe the United States should launch one, putting a major Republican donor at odds with President Donald Trump on one of his defining foreign policy decisions, POLITICO reported.
Thiel’s remarks, delivered on October 12 at a private event, are the most explicit statements to be made publicly about the war with Iran and come less than two weeks before the midterm elections in which Trump’s party holds power in Congress. Audio of Thiel’s remarks was obtained by Decoded by POLITICO from the lecture earlier this month.
“I’m skeptical [the war]I think we shouldn’t have done that,” Thiel said. “There were a lot of mistakes made.”
Thiel added, “Maybe we don’t have hard power. Maybe we’re going to lose the soft power war.”
In a full lecture, Thiel expressed his strong opposition to neoconservatives and Middle East wars. Despite his criticism of the Iran war, Thiel highlighted his continued support for Trump and suggested he wants to protect the president.
Still, Thiel’s break in the war is one of the most significant examples to date of a fierce Trump ally showing deep concern about the conflict.
The comments are part of Thiel’s lecture series in Nashville, which Decoded has been documenting since beginning this fall. In his latest lecture, Thiel issued extensive warnings about what he described as the power of the International Criminal Court, with comments from Bush-era figures Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
“I read the Trump derangement syndrome of the Cheney family as an attempt to buy favor with them [International Criminal Court] and avoid prosecution. It’s probably too late,” said Thiel. “And I already suspect that the threat of ICC arrest is the sword of Damocles hanging over the Trump administration for trying to perpetuate this war on Iran.”
Thiel also discussed a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in early 2024, after the Oct. 7 attack, where he said he asked the president about his plans in Gaza. Thiel said Netanyahu told him, “I can’t just Dresdenize it,” referring to the Allied bombing of the German city of Dresden during World War II that killed approximately 25,000 people.
The first big tech investor to support Trump in 2016, and then to play a high-profile role at the Republican National Convention that year, Thiel is also the biggest financial supporter of the super PAC supporting the Senate campaign of Vice President JD Vance in 2022. POLITICO reported in March that Vance was “skeptical” of the US attacking Iran at the start of the war.
Representatives for Thiel and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
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