The CEO of JP Morgan-Chase has given his unexpected backing to the US and Israel’s military campaign against Iran.
Speaking to Axios, Jamie Dimon acknowledged that it created “uncertainty” and “short-term risks” but argued that Tehran has posed a significant threat for a long time.
"Why the Western world put up with these proxy wars for 45 years is kind of beyond me," Dimon said.
He also rejected claims that the U.S.-Israeli strikes were conducted without there being an imminent threat.
“They’ve been killing people around the world for 45 plus years. They’ve killed a lot of Americans. They funded not just Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, they have terror cells here,” the CEO said from JP Morgan-Chase’s new global headquarters in Manhattan.
Dimon confessed earlier this week that he was unsure if the war with Iran would be a "tipping point" that pushes the U.S. into a recession, but "what's more important to the future of the world is that the war is successfully concluded."
"The economy is one big, complex beast, and even AI can't figure it out,” Dimon told CBS News. “I tell people anything that happens is a straw on the camel's back. So maybe one day the straw's gonna cause that tipping point and push us through a recession. Hopefully not stagflation.”
Dimon said, “The war is a couple straws on that camel's back,” but "whether that causes a tipping point, I don’t know.”
Asked whether the U.S. needed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Dimon said “I don’t know the answer to that question,” but said “it would be a real problem for the global economy” if it remained closed.
According to The Wall Street Journal, President Trump recently told aides he was considering ending the campaign against Iran without breaking their blockade of the straits – through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas flows.
Dimon’s hawkish comments supporting the war are unexpected, as he has typically offered a more liberal stance on U.S. foreign policy, opposing “America First” isolationism but warning of the human and economic costs.
Commenting on the outbreak of conflict in Gaza following Hamas’s attack against Israel on October 7 2023, he warned of “the most dangerous time the world has seen in decades” and the warned of the “far-reaching impacts on energy and food markets, global trade and geopolitical relationships.”
The JP Morgan-Chase chief also admitted to worrying about the economic impact at the time, saying, “My caution is that we are facing so many uncertainties out there.”
In his 2024 annual shareholder letter, he argued against international isolationism and urged Americans “to find ways to put aside our differences and work in partnership with other Western nations in the name of democracy.”
“[T]he ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East continue to have the potential to disrupt energy and food markets, migration, and military and economic relationships, in addition to their dreadful human cost,” Dimon wrote.
“These significant and somewhat unprecedented forces cause us to remain cautious.”
On Ukraine, however, he has consistently backed the U.S. in supporting resistance against the Russian invasion as part of a wider need to resist authoritarianism internationally.
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