(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com) Footage from an unreleased documentary about the late Lindsey Graham shows the notoriously hawkish senator celebrating the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran just days after the bombing campaign started.
“Look what we’ve done here. I almost cried. How long have we been pushing this?” a laughing Graham is heard saying in the footage, released by Alex Holder, a filmmaker granted extensive access to the South Carolina senator in the years leading up to his death.
Graham goes on to say that he spoke with President Trump, who he said was also very happy about the war. “I talked to Trump this morning, he’s jacked, he said, ‘best thing I have ever done.’ He loves blowing stuff up,” he said.
Graham then appeared to take credit for helping convince Trump to launch the war. “There are a lot of people inside who didn’t want to do it, so I had my challenges,” he said, adding that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were like “Roosevelt and Churchill.”
Holder also released footage of a phone call between Graham and Netanyahu from early March, during which Graham said he was going to travel to Florida to meet with President Trump to convince him to join Israel’s bombing campaign in Lebanon, but Netanyahu talked him out of it.
“We’re concentrating right now on Iran,” Netanyahu told Graham. “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.”
Graham had a close relationship with Netanyahu and spoke with him frequently and visited Israel often. Holder told The Wall Street Journal that he joined Graham in a trip to Israel and likened his treatment there to how a prime minister or a king would be treated.
Graham was also known as someone who could work with Democrats, and Holder released a call between him and Jake Sullivan, who served as President Biden’s national security advisor.
According to the Journal, Sullivan asked Graham how long the war would last. “In three to four weeks, we’re going to have them in a spot where they start losing control of some cities,” Graham replied. “Get the Arabs more openly involved tomorrow, and then have almost irreversible momentum.”
This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com.
