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Graham urges Iran war
Never-before-seen documentary footage released Sunday shows the late U.S. senator Lindsey Graham calling his multipronged campaign for war with Iran “the best thing I’ve ever done” while comparing President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.
CNN reports that Graham granted access to British filmmaker Alex Holder, who said he captured over 400 hours of footage of Graham over several years, including calls with Trump, Netanyahu, and Democratic former national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
In the footage, Graham is shown talking with Netanyahu and describing his conversations with the president, encouraging Trump to take more action with Israel, and Graham says, “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. He loves blowing stuff up,” in one clip.
The Jerusalem Post, citing The Wall Street Journal, describes an exchange recorded on March 4 in which Graham planned to travel to Florida to persuade Trump to bring the U.S. into Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon while the Iran war was underway, but Netanyahu urged him not to expand the campaign too quickly.
In that March 4 call, Netanyahu told Graham, “We’re concentrating right now on Iran,” and Graham replied, “That’s actually good counsel.”
Netanyahu reins him in
The Jerusalem Post says Netanyahu reined in Graham’s push to widen the Iran war, warning that a full-scale offensive would leave Hezbollah with no reason to exercise restraint against Israel, and Graham accepted the prime minister’s argument.
In the same March 4 exchange, Graham responded, “That’s actually good counsel,” after Netanyahu warned that expanding the campaign too quickly would be too much, too soon.
Ynetnews describes the March 4 call as Netanyahu telling Graham, “If we tell Hezbollah that we’re going all the way, we threaten them,” while adding that if Israel actually did it, Hezbollah would have “no reason not to go all the way against us.”
Ynetnews also reports that shortly after U.S. strikes on Iran began in February, Graham told the film crew, “Look what we’ve done here. I almost cried,” and said Trump was equally enthusiastic.
In the footage reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Graham is also shown predicting that “In three to four weeks, we’re going to have them in a spot where they start losing control of some cities,” while Sullivan asked how long the war would last.
Legacy, predictions, and fallout
CNN says Holder captured Graham’s role in Trump’s biggest ambitions in the president’s second term, including the Iran war and a massive modernization of the Pentagon, and it reports that Holder is aiming to release the full documentary called “Lindsey’s Game” in the coming months.
CNN also reports that Graham over the last decade morphed into one of Trump’s most trusted counselors on high-stakes geopolitical matters, and it quotes a longtime Trump adviser saying, “He looked at Lindsey as one of his foreign policy experts.”
The Jerusalem Post adds that Graham had publicly pushed for American military action before the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran on February 28, and it says he celebrated while speaking to the documentary crew, “Look what we’ve done here. I almost cried,” according to the footage.
Ynetnews reports that Graham’s March prediction to Sullivan about “almost irreversible momentum” proved far too optimistic, and it says the footage shows Graham’s frustration that Republicans and administration officials were failing to publicly defend the campaign.
CNN concludes by noting that Graham died earlier this month at 71, with memorial services set to take place this week in Washington and in his home state of South Carolina.
