President Donald Trump’s warmonger-in-chief, Lindsey Graham, has been called out for a deeply flawed Iran argument.
The South Carolina senator, who credits himself with nudging Trump into “Operation Epic Fury,” was taking another victory lap on Fox News on Tuesday night when he made the faux pas.
“When he heard they were that close to 10 [nuclear] weapons, he acted,” Graham gushed, speaking about Trump’s willingness to launch a new war in the Middle East. “And you know what? When this is over, we’re gonna obliterate their nuclear program, and there’s gonna be a new dawn in the Mideast.”
Critics immediately picked up on Graham’s comment, pointing out that the Trump administration already claimed to have “obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear capabilities during “Operation Midnight Hammer” last June.
The White House even slammed reports at the time that suggested the operation wasn’t a total success with a statement headlined: “Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News.”
“Every six months they’re gonna claim they need to obliterate the same nuclear program,” political commentator and author Brian Taylor Cohen reacted to Graham’s fact-free Fox News interview. “I thought it was already obliterated,” Pod Save the World host and former Obama aide Ben Rhodes asked.
“Who is Linds screaming to kill tonight?” another person reacted. “You guys might wanna stop using the O word,” another said.
During another Fox News interview on Monday, hawkish Graham once again showed his fervor for war. “I go back to South Carolina, I’m asking them to send their sons and daughters over to the Mideast,” he told Sean Hannity.
He added, “To our friends in Saudi Arabia, I am willing to do a treaty to go to war for you.”
This earned him swift condemnation from within his own ranks, and even from his own state. Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, also of South Carolina, shared the clip on X, writing, “What in the world would possess anyone to say this?”
“I do not want to send South Carolina’s sons and daughters into war with Iran.”
Graham, 70, who has never been married and has no children, also faced pushback from Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida. “NO BOOTS on the ground,” she wrote on X. “If Senator Graham wants to go fight in a foreign conflict, let him be the first to volunteer.”
Right-wing commentator Matt Walsh slammed Graham, too. “Where does he think he derives the authority to unilaterally offer permanent ‘defense agreements’ to foreign countries?” Walsh said on X.
Trump, meanwhile, had used the fear of Iran’s nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities as justification to launch the war earlier this month. He suggested that despite the “obliteration” in June, the regime had quickly mended nuclear sites across the country and was close to producing nukes again. At the end of February, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said Tehran was just a “week away” from developing nuclear bomb-making material.
Critics argue that he was convinced to enter the war by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for reasons that suit Israel’s quest for dominance in the region.
Graham has been contacted for comment.
