U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, during a visit to Kyiv, March 18, 2024. (Credit: Genya Savilov/AFP)
BEIRUT — Senator Lindsey Graham planned to travel to Florida in early March to persuade President Donald Trump to join Israel's bombing campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, until Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convinced him to abandon the idea.
The previously unseen exchange, recorded during a March 4 phone call, was released over the weekend in a documentary filmed before Graham's death on July 11.
Graham, a staunch supporter of Israel and a longtime advocate of military action against Iran, shared his plans with his "friend" Netanyahu, but ultimately backed down after the Israeli prime minister urged caution.
Netanyahu argued that involving Washington while Israel was fighting Iran would be going "too far, too fast." "We're concentrating right now on Iran," he replied. "If we tell Hezbollah that we're going all the way, we threaten them, but if we actually do it, then they have no reason not to go all the way against us. And right now that's not our interest." "That's actually good counsel," Graham responded from his Senate office, covered with Trump hats, scattered papers and Planters Peanuts, with a bottle of bourbon on the shelf.
The extraordinary exchange was captured by documentary filmmaker Alex Holder, who had extensive access to Graham from 2023 onward. The film provides an unvarnished look at the senator's years-long effort to topple the Iranian regime and the ways in which he sought to persuade Trump to authorize military strikes. It follows Graham as he travels to Saudi Arabia to persuade Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to back the war against Iran, and includes meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other world leaders, as well as candid conversations about American politics, according to The Wall Street Journal.
During the call with Netanyahu, Graham said it would be time for Israel and Saudi Arabia to normalize relations once the Iranian regime had fallen, adding that he had already lined up Republican and Democratic support. Netanyahu, however, encouraged him to focus first on Iran.
Other footage shows Graham celebrating the U.S. strikes on Iran. "Look what we've done here. I almost cried," he says, laughing before adding: "How long have we been pushing this?" He then claims he spoke with Trump after the bombings began. "I talked to Trump this morning, he's jacked, he said, 'best thing I have ever done.' He loves blowing stuff up."
The footage also follows Graham behind the scenes as he speaks with military commanders, travels with world leaders and discusses U.S. foreign policy. Holder was granted rare access, filming phone calls from the back seat of Graham's car and sitting in on sensitive meetings, offering an unusually intimate portrait of one of Washington's most influential foreign policy hawks.
Graham, whose frequent visits to Israel and Gulf countries made him a familiar face in the Middle East, died in early July at the age of 71 after an illness. A longtime foreign policy hawk and Air Force Reserve colonel, he entered Congress in 1995 before joining the Senate in 2003. In recent months, he had repeatedly urged military action against Tehran, continuing a decades-long effort to push successive U.S. administrations toward military action against the Islamic Republic.
