Billionaire technology investor Peter Thiel said he’s skeptical of the U.S. war with Iran and does not believe the United States should have launched it, putting the major Republican donor at odds with President Donald Trump over one of the administration’s defining foreign policy decisions.
Thiel’s remarks, delivered on Oct. 12 at a private event, are his most explicit statements to be revealed publicly about the war with Iran and come less than two weeks before the midterm elections in which Trump’s party is grasping to maintain power in Congress. The audio of Thiel’s comments was obtained by Decoded by POLITICO from a lecture earlier this month.
“I’m skeptical of [the war], I think we should not have done it,” Thiel said. “There were a lot of mistakes that were made.”
Thiel added, “Maybe we don’t have the hard power. Maybe we’re going to lose the soft power war.”
In the full lecture, Thiel made clear his strong opposition to neoconservatives and Middle East wars. Despite his criticism of the Iran war, Thiel highlighted his continued support of Trump and suggested he wanted to protect the president.
Still, Thiel’s break over the war represents one of the most important examples to date of a fierce Trump ally sharing deep concerns about the conflict.
The comments were part of Thiel’s lecture series in Nashville, which Decoded has documented since their start this fall. In the latest lecture, Thiel issued extensive warnings about what he described as the unchecked power of the International Criminal Court, drawing on comments from Bush-era figures Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
“I read the Cheney family’s Trump derangement syndrome as an attempt to buy favor with the [International Criminal Court] and avoid prosecution. Probably too late,” Thiel said. “And I have come to suspect that the threat of an ICC arrest warrant is the sword of Damocles hanging over the Trump administration as it tries to persecute this war in Iran.”
Thiel also discusses meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in early 2024, after the Oct. 7 attack, where he said he asked the leader 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 roughly 25,000 people.
The first big tech investor to back Trump in 2016, and then have a high-profile speaking role at the Republican National Convention that year, Thiel was also the biggest financial backer of super PACs supporting Vice President JD Vance’s Senate campaign in 2022. POLITICO reported in March that Vance was “skeptical” of the U.S. striking Iran in the lead-up to the beginning of the war.
Representatives for Thiel and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Read more from Thiel’s latest lectures in Thursday’s edition of Decoded by POLITICO, including his sentiments toward Israel and predictions for the 2028 election.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misstated Benjamin Netanyahu’s title.