Lindsey Graham Has Waited Decades For The Chance To Obliterate Iran

Lindsey Graham has been on a mission from God. The senator from South Carolina said on Jan. 15 that he would take a spontaneous trip to Israel, less than a month after his visit to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ambassador Mike Huckabee to discuss the purported ceasefire in Gaza. This time Graham was here to lobby, as a man alone and a trusted friend, to make sure a devastating war came to Iran’s shores as soon as possible.

Initially, at least, Graham had reason to be optimistic. On Jan. 2, the president promised massive retaliation against Iran for the killing of protesters, but then backtracked, claiming at first that many of the protesters had simply died in a stampede rather than from being gunned down. The same week that he rebuked Iranian security forces, Trump had threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act against protesters in Minneapolis, threatening to send the military to quell demonstrations against paramilitary officers who were themselves killing civilians. He then moved the goalposts again and said if there were mass executions of protesters, he would take action, but claimed he had stopped the mass executions (this was denied by Iran's prosecutor-general). To Graham’s chagrin, the fall of the Islamic Republic would not come that week.

Graham, who had posed with Trump and a "Make Iran Great Again" cap, ended up coming before the assembled press on Jan. 15, now only proverbially hat-in-hand, and spoke in an unusually dejected tone. "There are a lot of headlines out there that are, in my view, not accurate," the senator said. "President Trump’s resolve is not the question. The question is: When we do an operation like this, should it be bigger or smaller? I’m in the camp of bigger. Time will tell, and I’m hopeful and optimistic that the regime’s days are numbered."