The Deep End

Josh Dawsey has what would, in anything like normal times, have been the smoking gun:

As Lindsey Graham tried to sell Donald Trump on bombing Iran, he liked to play a little word-association game with the president.

“I say Franklin Roosevelt, what do you say?” the Republican senator from South Carolina asked. The correct answer: “You have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

As he ticked through memorable presidential phrases, Graham asked Trump what his phrase would be. Trump said he didn’t know, Graham recalled. “Keep protesting, help is on the way,” Graham suggested, referring to Trump’s social-media post in January urging Iranians to confront their government.

Few people lobbied Trump to undertake the riskiest gambit of his presidency as effectively as the hawkish and persistent Graham, who over a decade has held a sometimes close, sometimes tumultuous relationship with Trump.

Some Democrats and even Republicans point the finger at Graham, who they think goaded Trump into a Middle East conflict with little plan for how the situation will play out long term.

“Lindsey hasn’t seen a fist fight he hasn’t wanted to turn into a bombing raid,” said Rep. Tim Burchett (R., Tenn.). Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) said there should be a law passed on how often Graham goes to the White House or golfs with Trump. Graham’s effort to pull MAGA toward regime change was “the quintessential political maneuvering beyond all political maneuvering,” Paul said.

Sitting in his Senate office this week with canisters of Planters peanuts and hundreds of scattered papers on his desk and signed MAGA hats on his shelves, Graham was almost giddy about persuading Trump to bomb Iran. One of the newer hats reads “Make Iran Great Again.” “What are they going to do to me?” he said of critics who opposed his efforts.

The senator said he was already talking with Trump about further military interventions in Lebanon and potentially Cuba, which he said would happen soon. He wasn’t particularly concerned about what was next in Iran, he said.

The day after the attack began, Graham told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the goal of the Iran operation “is to change the threat, not the regime,” adding that the U.S. wouldn’t pick Iran’s next leader.

“They say if you break it, you own it. I don’t buy that. You break it when it’s a threat,” Graham said in the Journal interview.

In the White House, some military advisers warned Trump against the conflict, a group that Graham referred to as the “non-entanglement crowd.” Graham said betting on Trump’s second term was worth it for the president’s military interventions alone.

In the first term, Graham said, Trump probably wouldn’t have bombed Iran. He didn’t have as much confidence in the military and as much knowledge about how the world worked, he said. “Second-term Trump has different instincts than first-term Trump,” Graham said.

Other Republican presidents wouldn’t have greenlighted the Iran operation either, he said, something that he keeps reminding Trump of.

Graham said that Trump, with U.S. forces having captured Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and now bombed Iran, is more inclined to undertake further interventions. “That’s something that people don’t understand, how much more confident he is,” Graham said.

To help make the case on Iran, Graham traveled several times to Israel in recent weeks, meeting with members of the country’s intelligence agency. “They’ll tell me things our own government won’t tell me,” he said. He spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, coaching him on how to lobby the president for action. Netanyahu showed the president intelligence that persuaded Trump to go ahead, Graham said.

Graham also talked to the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to make sure he was aware. “I went to MBS to say, ‘OK, I think this is going down.’ ”

Representatives from the embassies of Israel and Saudi Arabia didn’t provide comment. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump often hears from lawmakers and has a good and candid relationship with Graham. “Republicans are unanimously supportive of President Trump’s bold decision to launch combat operations and end the threat posed by the Iranian terrorist regime,” she said.

Graham’s long game

Graham has long wanted regime change in Iran but has never had a president willing to go as far as Trump. In 2015, Trump famously read Graham’s cellphone number on stage, after Graham called him a jackass. Graham sharply criticized Trump over the riot by Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol. Trump has remarked to aides about how much Graham gets booed at the president’s rallies in South Carolina, and Graham has occasionally annoyed Trump with his persistence, White House officials say.

Graham came back to Trump, in part because he wanted to shape his foreign-policy thinking against isolationist figures in MAGA. Going back to Trump before others did after Jan. 6, he said, gave him more leverage on foreign policy.

“Lindsey has an interventionist mentality that is idealistic about America’s role in the world,” said Marc Short, a longtime chief of staff to Mike Pence. “The president doesn’t share that, but the president doesn’t always share the view that America is going to stay out of all foreign engagements.”

Graham is realistic about Trump. He has joked with others that the Ukrainians should build a Trump Tower in Kyiv if they wanted Trump to give more support to the country.

On Iran, Graham likened Iran’s leader to Adolf Hitler and told Trump that Iran was in a historically weak position. They talked about the regime’s efforts to assassinate Trump in 2024. “If you think Trump forgets stuff, you’d be mistaken,” Graham said.

He reminded Trump about ripping up Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. This was Trump’s moment to make history, Graham argued to the president. Graham said he first brought up Iran to Trump during the presidential transition, over a round of golf, telling him Iran would always be an impediment to normalizing relationships in the region.

For months, Graham worked the issue, at times irritating senior White House aides. One called him an “annoying crazy uncle.” He kept showing up at Trump’s Florida clubs.

After the U.S. strikes on Iran in June, Graham said the president was “sky high.” Iran would continue to build more missiles and nuclear material, Graham told him.

As other aides including Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff pushed talks, Graham pushed regime change. “I said, ‘They don’t want to deal,’ ” he said. “They’re not trying to buy a house. They’re trying to burn your house down.”

To make the case, Graham said he worked closely with two other men—retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, a Fox News contributor, and Marc Thiessen, onetime chief speechwriter for former President George W. Bush. The trio took turns calling the president, he said, and compared notes. Graham said “there were not a lot of other voices” advancing the argument for action.

Thiessen and Keane wrote opinion pieces and went on television to secure Trump’s attention. Trump has posted Thiessen articles online, including one where he argued Iranians could be the “boots on the ground.” Neither men responded to requests for comment.

Lebanon next

Many inside the president’s orbit have worried about what’s next for the U.S. in Iran, and Trump has articulated different visions for the country. They worry about how to find an off-ramp. Graham said he wasn’t concerned about that.

Graham is also dismissive of those who fear that a war will depress Trump’s followers ahead of the midterm elections, and he said MAGA ultimately would be supportive of the efforts.

Instead, when Trump called Graham this week to praise his television appearances supportive of the war, Graham saw an opportunity. The senator said he pitched Trump on bombing Iranian and Hezbollah elements in Lebanon. “Operation Semper Fi,” he called it, in honor of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut that killed 241 American personnel, arguing that Trump could go even further than former President Ronald Reagan.

Trump said he would think about it, Graham recalled. “I just think he has seen the capability of our military,” Graham said. In a private lunch with senators Tuesday, Graham battled other Republicans who wanted more information about Trump’s war and some who wanted to curb his authority. Trump, he argued, was doing a better job than ever before.

“What I don’t understand is why more people don’t do it,” Graham said. “Try to shape these events. This is a moment of world history here. Just jump in the deep end of the pool.”