The U.S.-Israeli campaign in Iran has been criticized as a war of choice, one with an unclear strategy and even more uncertain target outcomes. But for one of Wall Street’s leading financial chiefs, the choice to wage war in the Middle East may actually have been an unavoidable one.
Now in its second month, the war has exposed the extent to which global energy and financial markets rely on stability in the Middle East. Shortly after the incursion began, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard began warning ships to steer clear of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that once allowed one fifth of globally traded oil and natural gas supplies to leave the Persian Gulf. The strait has been under an effective blockade ever since, sending oil prices surging and leaving markets jittery.
The closure has created “uncertainty” and “short-term risks” for the world economy, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said during an interview with Axios aired Wednesday. The current state of the campaign may not have been part of President Donald Trump’s original war plan, given that he was reportedly surprised by Iran’s quick move to weaponize the strait. But Dimon also asked a different question, wondering why the U.S. and its allies accepted the risk of a hostile regime controlling the shores of the global economy’s most important chokepoint for as long as they did.
“Having those folks, their throat on the Strait of Hormuz, and funding all these proxy wars. Why the western world put up with all these proxy wars for 45 years is kind of beyond me,” Dimon said.
The Iranian regime has existed since a revolutionary upheaval in 1979 that replaced the U.S.-backed monarchy with a theocratic Islamic republic that currently rules the country. Post-revolution Iran has consistently been an adversary to the U.S. and Israel. The country has habitually funded and supplied weapons to various proxy militias across the Middle East, such as the Houthis in Yemen, which in recent years have regularly disrupted trade and shipping in the Red Sea and around the Horn of Africa.
Hopes for permanent peace
The Trump administration has come under fire from overseas allies, Democrats, and even some factions of his own party for engaging in what has been described as a war of choice. Voters at large are unhappy with the campaign as well, with most polls suggesting a majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the war and find the administration’s justifications for it insufficient.
Dimon pushed back against that narrative somewhat. When interviewer Jim VandeHei, Axios’ co-founder and CEO, framed the military campaign as a “war of choice,” Dimon asked to “step back on that a little bit.” He said that the dovish position that Iran posed “no imminent threat” to U.S. national security is really saying “the bad thing hasn’t happened” yet.
“They’ve been killing people around the world for 45-plus years. They’ve killed a lot of Americans, they’ve funded not just Hamas; Hezbollah, the Houthis. They have terrorist cells here,” Dimon said.
Iran’s Hormuz blockade employs a similar strategy to the one deployed by the Houthis on the other end of the Arabian peninsula. In retaliation to Israel’s military incursion in Gaza, the militia began targeting ships with missile and drone strikes in 2024, forcing vessels to transit around Africa instead in a deviation that added up to 30% in transit times. A ceasefire deal was mediated last year, but many ships have continued to steer clear of Houthi-controlled waters, especially since the war in Iran started.
The banker also pointed out how Iran “never gave up” on its goal to build nuclear weapons, despite U.S. strikes against Iranian facilities last year and tentative talks between the two countries to secure a deal over the regime’s nuclear program shortly before the current war’s onset.
In Dimon’s telling, the Iranian threat was real and escalating, and he argued that neutering that risk would likely turn the campaign into a success story to balance out the disruption caused so far.
“I literally hope it turns out well and that somehow we get peace in the Middle East permanently,” Dimon said.
An ambitious target
Trump’s goal for stability in the Middle East remains a lofty one. Despite weeks of aerial strikes and crippled leadership, the regime is still standing and continues to exert control on transit through the strait. Experts have also said that ground forces would likely be needed to capture and neutralize Iran’s enriched uranium stores.
The lack of a clear plan for Iran following the war’s conclusion has also raised questions, with researchers at the Brookings Institution, a think tank, warning last month that the conflict could bring increased refugee flows and prolonged energy disruption long after its conclusion. Some governments have had similar hesitations. Officials in Turkey, for instance, have expressed concern that a regime collapse in Iran could leave a power vacuum empowering other regional movements—such as the Kurdish militia located between Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq—further eroding prospects for stability in the Middle East.
Despite the challenging odds, Dimon laid out a narrow path toward stability. He noted that the weakening of Iran and its proxy actors might lower hostilities for a time. It also helps that multiple stakeholders in the region—Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as well as the U.S. and Israel—are all more or less aligned in their goals, leading to “higher chance with long-term peace,” Dimon said.
Countering calls at home for Trump to exit the conflict, many U.S. allies in the Middle East have reportedly been urging the president to press forward with his goals in Iran. Last week, the New York Times reported that Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, has privately cautioned Trump against winding down the war, advising the U.S. president that success in Iran represented a “historic opportunity” to reshape power dynamics in the region. Other Gulf states, including the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait, have reportedly held similar talks pushing for the war to proceed until the Iranian leadership has been overhauled.
The longer term strategic payoff of a more stable Middle East would likely justify the volatility incurred since the war began, according to Dimon. But over the past month, the Trump administration has taken its crash course in learning just how elusive a foreign policy goal that might be.
