GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham Dies; Advocated More War to His Last Day
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who died Saturday night, spent the last days of his life advocating for more war in Iran and more conflict with Russia.
Graham was 71 when he died after a “sudden illness,” his office said. The office did not say what befell the Israel First senator. The Washington Post reported rescue efforts at Graham’s home that suggest he suffered a heart attack.
A day before he died, he again threatened Russia with sanctions and proxy war through Ukraine. And just last week, he again said the United States must “obliterate” Iran. In 2024, he suggested that Israel should hit Iran with a nuclear weapon because the United States had done the same to Japan.
In 2022, he called for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Chest Pains”
On Friday, Graham visited a secret drone factory in Kyiv, Ukraine. While there, as was his wont, he urged more U.S. involvement with the dictatorship. He met with “President” Volodymyr Zelensky and urged U.S. cooperation “with Ukraine in the field of drones. They are ready to help us, because we were ready to support Ukraine in the most difficult times.”
Before leaving, Graham said he would push the U.S. Senate and President Donald Trump to wage more kinetic and economic war on Russia.
“We’ve reached agreement with the White House on a version of the Russian sanctions bill that they will support,” he told reporters after the tour:
It means it’s gonna become law. So when I get back to Washington, I’m gonna go with [Democratic] Senator [Richard] Blumenthal [of Connecticut] to the Republican and Democratic leader[s] to see if we can find time to move this Russian sanctions package that would give tools to President Trump to help end this war.
He continued:
There’s some things we can do on the technology front to build on the lethality of Ukraine to protect itself from ballistic missile attack. If we did that, combined with creating tools to punish those countries that prop up Putin, that make money off this war, then I think we’ve got the best chance since I’ve been coming here in the last five years to get Putin to the peace table.
Some X users speculated that Russia assassinated Graham. Others pondered Iran’s possible role in his death given the recent protest that featured placards of Graham, chicken-hawk podcaster Ben Shapiro, billionaire Israel loyalist Miriam Adelson, and other Israel Firsters with crosshairs on their foreheads.
But citing audio from a 911 call, the Post reported that “emergency medical services received a call around 8:30 p.m. for a person suffering chest pains at a Capitol Hill home owned by Graham.”
As well, the newspaper continued, paramedics performed CPR on a “man” at the residence who suffered cardiac arrest. An ambulance took the man to George Washington University Hospital.
Advocate for Perpetual War
Iran and Russia won’t miss him.
Most recently, on CBS’s Face the Nation Graham said Trump should “obliterate” Iran, then seize the Strait of Hormuz and charge fees to traverse it if peace talks fail:
If this deal fails, President Trump is going to take the Strait of Hormuz over by force. The United States will control the Strait of Hormuz. We’ll charge a fee for all those who go through … to pay for the operation, and we’re going to expand the Abraham Accords in calendar year 2026. We’re going to get Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords … which is the biggest change in 5,000 years in the Mideast. And if Iran contests control of the Strait of Hormuz by the United States, we will obliterate them. So, to all the people listening, if this diplomatic effort fails, President Trump is going to take the Strait of Hormuz.
In mid-May, on NBC’s Meet the Press, he urged Trump to escalate his unconstitutional war on Iran by wrecking its oil industry.
“Whatever price we have to pay, we will pay,” he said:
What did Churchill say? Whatever price we have to pay to beat Hitler, we will pay. Same with Iran.
In March, he urged an attack on Kharg Island, the center of Iran’s petroleum industry, by U.S. Marines. “We’ve got two Marine Expeditionary Units sailing to this island,” he said:
We did Iwo Jima. We can do this. My money is always on the Marines.
“I’m with Israel … till our dying day,” Graham told chicken-hawk Fox bloviator Sean Hannity earlier that month. “[When] I go back to South Carolina, I’m asking them to send their sons and daughters to the Middle East,” he said.
“We’re killing all the right people, and we’re cutting your taxes,” Graham said in November:
Trump is my favorite president. We’ve run out of bombs, we didn’t run out of bombs in World War II. … We love Israel.
On May 12, 2024, on Meet the Press, hostess Kristen Welker asked why Israel needed “massive bombs that can potentially level an entire block.”
Graham suggested hitting Iran with a nuclear weapon:
Here’s what I would say about fighting an enemy who wants to kill you and your family. Why did we drop two bombs — nuclear bombs — on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? To end a war that we couldn’t afford to lose. You don’t understand apparently what Israel is facing. They’re facing three groups. Iran, who has received $80 billion in aid. When Trump left office they were exporting 300 barrels of oil a day. Now they’re at 1.3 million a day. They’ve been enriched by [former President Joe] Biden. They’re taking that money to kill all the Jews. So when we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor, fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons. That was the right decision. Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war they can’t afford to lose and work with them to minimize casualties.
In May 2022, when Hannity advocated assassinating Russian President Vladimir Putin, Graham agreed with him on X.
“Is there a Brutus in Russia?” he asked:
Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?
The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.
You would be doing your country — and the world — a great service.
Claus von Stauffenberg was the Germany Army officer executed for attempting to assassinate Nazi leader Adolf Hitler with a bomb.
