Billionaire Donor Breaks With Trump on Iran War

Billionaire Peter Thiel is backing President Trump but balking at his Iran war. In audio from an Oct. 12 lecture obtained by Politico's Decoded, the influential GOP donor said he's "skeptical" of the conflict and "we should not have done it," calling it riddled with mistakes and warning the US may be losing both military and diplomatic ground. Thiel, a longtime critic of Middle East interventions and early tech-world supporter of Trump, framed his comments as coming from an ally trying to shield the president.

• Politico describes his remarks as an "important example" of a Trump ally expressing concerns about the war. The Paypal co-founder and Palantir chairman once employed JD Vance and funded his early political career.

"Maybe we don't have the hard power. Maybe we're going to lose the soft power war," Thiel said at the event. He also floated a provocative theory that the International Criminal Court looms over the administration "like a sword of Damocles," claiming that the Cheney family's "Trump derangement syndrome" is an effort to "buy favor" with the ICC to avoid prosecution. Thiel also described an exchange with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu months after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack. Thiel said Netanyahu told him, regarding Gaza, "I can't just Dresdenize it," referring to the Allied bombing that destroyed much of the German city in early 1945.