![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2241014390-e1775489709453.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Jamie Dimon has never been one to soften a warning. In his annual letter to JPMorgan Chase shareholders, released Monday, the most influential banker in the world offered a full-throated, if measured, defense of the U.S. war on Iran, even as he made clear that the conflict is driving the global economy into genuinely uncharted territory. Dimon\u2019s warnings have been growing in alarm on geopolitics since the outbreak of the Ukraine war in 2022, and on dire economic threats since 2024, and this year\u2019s edition somehow marries both of them.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Dimon invoked Ukraine as a potential catalyst for the \u201crestructuring of the global order.\u201d In 2023, he was consumed by the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) crisis, warning that its repercussions would be felt \u201cfor years to come.\u201d In 2024, he issued his most economically alarming letter yet, warning of stickier inflation, unprecedented liquidity drains, and interest rates \u201chigher than markets expect.\u201d Each year brought a new crisis to center stage. This year is different: The U.S. is an active combatant in an ongoing war, and Dimon isn\u2019t looking away.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ongoing war in Ukraine, the conflict between Iran and both the United States and Israel, and other major hostilities across the globe should permanently dispel the illusion that the world is safe,\u201d he wrote. It is a sentence that lands differently than his prior warnings\u2014less a forecast of what might go wrong, more a reckoning with what already has.<\/p>\n
Dimon\u2019s case for the war<\/p>\n
On Iran specifically, Dimon made his position unambiguous. This is not, in his view, a war of choice. He has been building this argument publicly for weeks: In a widely watched interview with Axios earlier this month, he pushed back on that notion, questioning why the Western world had for so long tolerated a regime with, in his words, its \u201cthroat on the Strait of Hormuz\u201d and a pattern of \u201ckilling people around the world for 45-plus years.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Monday\u2019s letter, that argument gets its fullest airing yet. The Iranian threat, Dimon wrote, needed to be dealt with \u201curgently if Iran ever acquires a nuclear ballistic missile\u201d\u2014calling nuclear proliferation \u201cthe gravest threat to the future of mankind.\u201d To be sure, he acknowledged, \u201ctime will tell whether the current war in Iran achieves our short-term and long-term objectives in the region and at what cost,\u201d but in the short term, the cost looks to be quite high indeed, and not just for the U.S.<\/p>\n
The economic toll<\/p>\n
Dimon was unflinching about the economic toll of the war, even less than two months into hostilities. The war, he warned, is generating \u201cthe potential for significant ongoing oil and commodity price shocks, along with the reshaping of global supply chains, which may lead to stickier inflation and ultimately higher interest rates than markets currently expect.\u201d The ripple effects extend well beyond energy: \u201cIt\u2019s not just energy\u2014it\u2019s commodity products that are byproducts of oil and gas, like fertilizer and helium. And given our complex global supply chains, countries are experiencing disruptions in shipbuilding, food, and farming, among others.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is far from alone in that assessment.\u00a0Larry Fink, who runs BlackRock, the world\u2019s largest asset manager, has warned that oil reaching $150 a barrel\u2014a plausible scenario if the conflict drags on\u2014would trigger \u201ca stark and steep recession,\u201d while flagging the same agricultural and fertilizer supply-chain vulnerabilities that Dimon identified. Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, has put hard numbers behind the warnings: Its economists\u00a0cut their U.S. growth forecast and raised their recession risk to 30%\u00a0under a prolonged conflict scenario, while revising December 2026 PCE (personal consumption expenditures) inflation up to 3.1%, and their Brent crude forecast to $98\u2014up roughly 40% from last year\u2019s average. Morgan Stanley has flagged a compounding risk: wartime defense spending piling onto already elevated U.S. debt, pushing long-term Treasury yields higher and creating \u201ca potential headwind for stock and bond markets alike.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not everyone is alarmed<\/p>\n
Ed Yardeni has maintained a bullish year-end S&P 500 target and suggested recession risk could ease once there is clarity that the conflict is winding down\u2014representing the faction of investors trying to look past the war rather than fully price it in. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, for his part, has stayed carefully in the analyst lane, saying markets are focused on whether the conflict will \u201caffect economic growth and activity,\u201d more of a wait-and-see approach.<\/p>\n
A resilient economy with real vulnerabilities<\/p>\n
The stakes, in Dimon\u2019s telling, could not be higher. \u201cThe outcome of current geopolitical events,\u201d he wrote, \u201cmay very well be the defining factor in how the future global economic order unfolds.\u201d Then again, he added, it may not be. <\/p>\n
The broader economic picture that the CEO painted is one of resilience shadowed by real vulnerability. Consumers are still spending, he noted, but \u201cwith some recent weakening.\u201d The U.S. economy has been propped up by \u201clarge amounts of government deficit spending and past stimulus,\u201d he cautioned\u2014a foundation that looks less solid when oil shocks and trade disruptions are pushing costs in the wrong direction. High asset prices, he added, \u201ccreate additional risk if anything goes wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite those warnings, Dimon has not abandoned hope for the war\u2019s outcome. He told Axios that he hopes it turns out well \u201cand that somehow we get peace in the Middle East permanently,\u201d pointing to alignment between the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE as giving the campaign a higher chance of achieving long-term stability. His letter echoed that sentiment: \u201cWe sincerely hope these global conflicts are properly resolved and that one day all of Europe and the Middle East will attain long-term stability and prosperity.\u201d<\/p>\n
What Dimon is describing, taken together, is a world in active transition\u2014one where the post\u2013Cold War assumptions of open supply chains, low inflation, and relative geopolitical stability are being dismantled in real time. \u201cWe must deal with the world we have,\u201d he wrote, \u201cand strive for the one we want.\u201d<\/p>\n
JPMorgan posted $57 billion in net income in 2025, down from $58.5 billion the year before. Dimon was careful not to confuse his firm\u2019s resilience with immunity. \u201cWe cannot confidently predict the outcome of current events,\u201d he wrote, \u201cand our company is not immune to their ultimate effects.\u201d<\/p>\n
For this story,\u00a0Fortune\u00a0journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.<\/p>\n
#Jamie #Dimon #defends #U.S #war #Iranand #warns #pushing #economy #uncharted #territory<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jamie Dimon has never been one to soften a warning. In his annual letter to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[245],"tags":[4027,5526,649,376,7329,586,5535,6094,1727,7331,722,7330,684,372],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3235"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}