Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) urged President Donald Trump to launch direct military attacks on Iran should diplomatic efforts to negotiate an end to the regime’s nuclear program fail.
“Diplomacy is preferred,” Graham said during a CBS News interview on Sunday morning. “But force may be the only option. … I would urge President Trump to go all in to make sure that when this operation is over, there’s nothing left standing in Iran regarding their nuclear program.”
“I’ve said as clearly as I can say, if diplomacy fails, Mr. President … help Israel finish the job. Give them bombs, fly with them if necessary. I cannot stress to you how, if you want to get Russia right, you want to make China be better, you want to convince international terrorism we mean business, you’ve got to finish the job with Iran,” the South Carolina Republican continued.
The United States, earlier this year, placed a 60-day ultimatum on Iran to reach a deal addressing concerns about its nuclear capacities. One day after Trump’s deadline passed, Israel mounted targeted and successful strikes focused on wiping out Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities, fueling an escalating conflict in the region between the two Middle Eastern powers.
However, Trump revealed Sunday that negotiations are underway and a peace agreement between Israel and Iran could be coming “soon” in the conflict between the two countries, possibly allowing for the rescheduling of U.S. talks with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime on its nuclear program that had been scheduled for Sunday but were canceled after Israel launched its attack last week.
And while lawmakers such as Graham have urged Trump to place crippling sanctions on Moscow, which has forged an increasingly close military alliance with Iran in recent years, the president expressed hope that Russian President Vladimir Putin could play a crucial role in mediating an agreement between the Ayatollah and Israel.
“He is ready. He called me about it,” Trump said Sunday of a Saturday phone call he held with Putin discussing the Russian leader’s willingness to mediate a peace deal between Iran and Israel. “We had a long talk about it. We talked about this more than his situation. This is something I believe is going to get resolved.”
On Sunday, Graham revealed he had held a phone call with Trump the previous day on the conflict and said he urged the president to spurn his pragmatic assessment of Russia about both Iran and Ukraine, which Putin invaded in 2022. Putin is “playing a game” with Trump, Graham said as he urged Congress to pass his sweeping sanctions legislation on Russia.
”President Trump has tried diplomacy. And I will say this. I talked to him last night, ‘You’ve made very sincere efforts to get Putin to the table. I think he’s playing a game with you and the entire world. It is now time to change the game with Putin,’” Graham said.
“Stay tuned. If we do not have a breakthrough soon, I would expect that these sanctions will move through the Senate and the House,” he added. “So these sanctions are coming if Putin doesn’t change.”
Previous administrations have long sought to address concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, including through the controversial Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreement former President Barack Obama signed with Iran in 2015. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA during his first term, citing concerns, including that the agreement didn’t sufficiently force Iran to reduce its uranium enrichment program, which can be used to make a nuclear bomb.
During a Fox News interview with Bret Baier on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran viewed Trump as “enemy No. 1” due in part to his role in overhauling the JCPOA. Citing an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump before he won reelection last year, Netanyahu said Iran “wants to kill him” because Trump “never took the path that others took to try to bargain with them in a way that is weak.”
“He’s a decisive leader,” the prime minister said of Trump, praising the president for refusing to give Iran “basically a pathway [through the JCPOA] to enrich uranium, which means a pathway to the bomb, padding it with billions and billions of dollars.”
“He took up this fake agreement and basically tore it up,” Netanyahu continued. “He made it very clear, including now, ‘You cannot have a nuclear weapon, which means you cannot enrich uranium.’ He’s been very forceful, so for them, he’s enemy No. 1.”
TRUMP VOWS ISRAEL AND IRAN ‘WILL MAKE A DEAL’ TO END CONFLICT
Netanyahu refused during the interview to confirm or deny reports that Trump opposed a plan to kill Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Trump told Netanyahu over the past week that he didn’t think the Israeli plan was a good idea when given information that the Israel Defense Forces had the opportunity to assassinate the Iranian leader, according to multiple U.S. officials.
“I’m not going to get into that,” the Israeli prime minister said when pressed on the matter. “But I can tell you I think we do what we need to do. We will do what we need to do, and I think the United States knows what is good for the United States, and I’m just not going to get into it.”
