Senator Lindsey Graham credited himself with persuading United States President Donald Trump to join Israel in going to war against Iran, “almost cried” with joy when the conflict began, and offered to lobby Trump on behalf of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Lebanon too, newly released footage has shown.
Graham, who died on July 11 aged 71, was a close confidant of Trump and Netanyahu, both of whom are attending his funeral on Tuesday.
Recommended Stories
list 1 of 4Ukraine’s ‘volunteer army’ helps rebuild what Russia destroys
list 2 of 4‘War criminal’: Protesters confront Netanyahu motorcade in Washington DC
list 3 of 4Sixty Palestinians detained by Israel return to Gaza, describe abuses
list 4 of 4‘Future at stake’: India moves to demolish university Muslim leader founded
British filmmaker Alex Holder and his team, who were granted extraordinary access to shadow the hawkish Republican senator over the past three years for a planned documentary, gave the Wall Street Journal some recent excerpts from more than 400 hours of footage they had accumulated.
One excerpt shows Graham chatting with the documentary crew shortly after watching Trump on television answering questions from reporters on March 3 for the first time since the US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, which killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and started the war.
Graham, laughing and clearly delighted, exclaimed: “How long have we been pushing this?”
“Look what we’ve done here. I almost cried,” Graham said. “I talked to Trump this morning. Oh, he’s jacked! He said ‘best thing I’ve ever done’. He loves blowing stuff up.”
Graham said he had successfully persuaded Trump to launch the war despite many people in the president’s circle being opposed to it, and compared the alliance of Trump and Netanyahu to the World War II partnership of President Franklin D Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
“So, you know, there are a lot of people inside [who] didn’t want to do it, so I’ve had my challenges. But President Trump, when he gets into the zone, he listens, he asks good questions, you know, no tweeting,” Graham said.
“He hasn’t tweeted much at all. No drama. He’s been a great wartime president,” Graham continued. “I said last night that Trump and Bibi are like Roosevelt and Churchill. I mean, they’re the right two guys to confront this evil.”
‘Hey Bibi, Lindsey’
Another section of the footage shows part of a telephone conversation between Graham and Netanyahu on March 4, two days after Hezbollah resumed rocket attacks on Israel in support of Iran.
“Hey Bibi, Lindsey,” Graham began, using Netanyahu’s nickname.
“I’m just so impressed, glad to be your friend,” he continued, in his distinctive South Carolina drawl.
“Glad you are my friend,” Netanyahu replied.
Graham told Netanyahu he planned to try to persuade Trump to join Israel in bombing Hezbollah targets in Lebanon: “I’m going to meet with the president this weekend … I’m gonna try to get him to join with y’all in Lebanon, to maybe fly some with you, would you like that?”
“I think you have a point,” Netanyahu said, before telling Graham to hold off.
“We’re concentrating right now on Iran,” Netanyahu said. “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. We can do it later.”
The Wall Street Journal said some of the footage showed Graham’s occasional frustration with Trump.
In the final interview for the documentary, at a bagel shop in Columbia, South Carolina, in June, Graham was concerned about the preliminary ceasefire agreement Trump had signed with Iran, according to the newspaper.
“He’s letting this thing slip away,” Graham said. “I got to go talk to him.”
