Remarkable new video shows Lindsey Graham celebrating after convincing Trump to strike Iran… as extraordinary exchange with Netanyahu about ‘dragging US into another conflict’ is revealed
The late Senator Lindsey Graham once described how he “almost cried” during the US’s first strike against Iran in late February.
The longtime Republican lawmaker, who lives in South Carolina, made the joke while being filmed for a documentary chronicling his quest to topple the Iranian regime and efforts to persuade President Donald Trump to launch an initial attack on the country. According to the Wall Street Journal.
When the air raids rained down in late February, Graham turned to the film crew and said: ‘Look what we did here. I almost cried. How long have we been pushing this?’
Graham later told the crew that Trump was also pleased with the war he helped start.
‘I spoke to Trump this morning, he was attacked. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. He likes to blow things up,” the senator said.
Following the success, Graham also apparently planned to persuade the president to join Israel in bombing Hezbollah sites in Lebanon — until Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talked him out of it, unreleased footage from the documentary shows.
The Israeli leader had warned that taking the US into action in the middle of the Iran war would be a step too far, and too fast as the war in Iran approached.
“We are focusing on Iran right now,” Netanyahu said in Graham’s March 4 phone call via speakerphone.
Lindsey Graham encouraged President Donald Trump to launch a first strike on Iran in February
Documentarian Alex Holder had perfect access to the South Carolina legislator
‘If we say we will go all the way to Hezbollah, we will threaten them, but if we actually do it, there will be no reason for them not to go all the way against us. And that’s not in our best interest right now.’
Other scenes in filmmaker Alex Holder’s documentary show Graham flying to meet Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to encourage him to join the war effort, meeting with other world leaders and expressing his thoughts about lawmakers in the months before his death at 71.
It also documents Graham’s occasional frustrations with the Trump administration over its war effort.
At one point in the film, the Republican spoke with former President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan about the challenges he faced working with the Trump administration as negotiations continued in the Middle East.
“I can’t do this with Jared, I can’t do this with Witkoff, there are too many conflicts between them,” he lamented about his son-in-law Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoys for the negotiations.
“It should be Rubio,” Graham added of Secretary of State.
However, a White House spokesman insisted in a statement to the Journal Graham that Witkoff and Kushner were close friends.
‘Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are excellent deal makers whose results speak for themselves,’ the spokesman said.
Graham expressed disappointment with Trump’s special envoys Jared Kusner and Steve Witkoff (pictured together in June).
In the conversation in March, Sullivan also asked Graham how long he expected the war to last.
‘Within three to four weeks we will get them to the point where they will start to lose control of some cities,’ Graham predicted, and shared his plan to ‘more openly involve the Arabs tomorrow’, at which point they will ‘gain almost irreversible momentum’.
But Graham also described how he had to deal with “a lot of people” who didn’t want Trump to start a war in Iran, and as the fighting continued, the lawmaker expressed frustration that others in his party weren’t doing enough to support the war effort.
‘Very few people are selling this war from the administration. ‘I was shocked,’ he once told the film crew.
After President Trump signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran in June, Graham lamented that even the president had become too indecisive about war.
“He’s letting this thing slip away,” Graham told the film crew. ‘I need to talk to him.’
Graham predicted war in Iran would last only a few weeks
Holder told the Journal that the lawmaker described the commander in chief as “fun to be around” and liked him, but understood Trump’s limitations.
