هذا التقرير متاح أيضًا بـ العربية
On the evening of Saturday, July 11, 2026, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina died at 71 after what his office described as a “short and sudden illness.” His death came as a surprise: The man who had spent more than two decades in the Senate had been in Kyiv just two days earlier on his 10th visit to Ukraine, was preparing to appear on Meet the Press, and was in the middle of a reelection campaign for a fifth term.
Graham occupies a prominent place in the history of US foreign policy over recent decades. He was one of the leading faces of the Republican camp that championed the use of military force, and among the most visible American politicians on the files of the Middle East, Ukraine and Iran. For many years, he was also one of the most influential voices in shaping Congress’ positions toward Israel.
The importance of tracing his career goes beyond his personal biography, because it reveals the contours of an entire American political school that combined legislative influence, close ties to the security establishment, and unlimited defense of Israeli policies. From that standpoint, reading Graham’s career offers an entry point to understanding one of the most influential currents in American decision-making toward the region.
From the Sanitary Cafe to the Capitol dome
He was born Lindsey Olin Graham on July 9, 1955, in the small town of Central, South Carolina, to a working-class family that ran a cafe, restaurant and pool hall known as the Sanitary Cafe. He grew up behind the storefront of that modest establishment and was the first member of his family to attend college, in a path that embodied the classic American model of social mobility from a humble background to the heart of Washington’s political establishment.
The loss of his mother and then his father over the course of about 15 months, when he was in his early 20s, marked a turning point in his life. He took responsibility for his younger sister, Darline, and legally adopted her, making that experience part of the personal narrative he later invoked in his political rhetoric. Graham never married, attributing that to the nature of his career.
Graham earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of South Carolina in 1977, then a Juris Doctor from the same university’s law school in 1981. After graduating, he joined the US Air Force JAG Corps in 1982, where he served for about six and a half years as a prosecutor and defense attorney. From 1984 to 1988, he served as chief prosecutor for the US Air Force in Europe, based at Rhein-Main Air Base in Frankfurt, Germany.
After his active-duty service ended in 1989, he joined the South Carolina Air National Guard and then the Air Force Reserve, continuing his military service alongside his political career until retiring in 2015 with the rank of colonel, after more than three decades in uniform.
Sources document an incident that was significant in shaping his public image. In 1998, The Hill raised questions about his description of himself as a veteran of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. He clarified that he had never claimed to be a combat veteran or a war hero, and that he had not been deployed to a combat zone. The episode reflects one aspect of his political persona: rhetoric deeply tied to the military establishment, set against a service record that was fundamentally legal rather than combat-based.
Graham began his political career by being elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1992. He then moved in 1994, amid what became known as the Republican Revolution in Congress, to the US House of Representatives as the representative for the state’s 3rd District, becoming the first Republican to hold the seat since 1877. During his time in the House from 1995 to 2003, he rose to national prominence as one of the managers of President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, a role that brought him closer to the Republican Party leadership.
With the retirement of veteran Sen. Strom Thurmond, he won a Senate seat in 2002 and took office on Jan. 3, 2003. He was then reelected in 2008, 2014 and 2020, becoming the state’s senior senator and the first figure in South Carolina history to surpass 1 million votes in a general election in 2008.
He crowned his parliamentary career by serving as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2021, where he oversaw the confirmation of a number of conservative Supreme Court justices. In his final years, he then chaired the Budget Committee, a position that gave him a pivotal role in passing major legislation during President Donald Trump’s second term under a narrow Republican majority.
A Zionist from the beginning
If Graham’s statements during the war on Gaza made him a familiar name in the Arab world, his support for Israel was a constant line that stretched for more than three decades inside Congress, evolving from institutional and legislative backing into a personal creed articulated in explicitly religious language. He summed up that conviction by saying, “God blesses those who bless Israel.”
His legislative record reveals deep involvement in entrenching the legal architecture of US support for “Israel” years before the 2023 war. In 2017, he helped introduce the Israel Anti-Boycott Act and the Combating BDS Act, both aimed at criminalizing the economic boycott of Israel. He also introduced the Taylor Force Act, which sought to halt US aid to the Palestinian Authority over stipends for the families of prisoners and martyrs, and co-sponsored the US-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act and the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act in 2018.
Before that, in 2016, he sought to secure an additional $3.4 billion in security assistance for Israel, in a course that reflected sustained legislative and strategic commitment.
That course was consistent with his stance toward US administrations he believed were not sufficiently aligned with Israel. He threatened to block Chuck Hagel’s confirmation as defense secretary under Barack Obama, describing him as “the most antagonistic secretary of defense toward the state of Israel in our nation’s history.”
He also attacked the Obama administration for abstaining rather than using its veto against UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which condemned Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as a violation of international law, treating any critical American distance from Israel as a deviation that required confrontation.
His bias was not limited to political defense; it extended to embracing geopolitical changes in Israel’s favor. In March 2019, he called on the Trump administration to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, and he was among the most prominent advocates of moving the US Embassy from “Tel Aviv” to Jerusalem and recognizing it as Israel’s capital, saying that anyone who objected should “go complain to God.” This use of religious rhetoric to justify the realities of occupation reveals one of the clearest features of his political creed.
On a personal level, Graham became one of the most frequent visitors to Israel in Congress, meeting Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly in Tel Aviv and Washington. Netanyahu described him more than once as “Israel has no better friend” in the United States, an expression that reflected a relationship that went beyond political coordination to a close personal and institutional partnership.
An unrestrained backer of genocide
Lindsey Graham’s rhetoric reached its peak during the war on Gaza after Oct. 7, 2023, when he moved from conventional defense of Israel to justifying the highest levels of violence against civilians, framing his positions in language that stripped Palestinians of their humanity and provided political and moral cover for the war.
On Oct. 10, 2023, he declared that he stood “without apology with Israel,” described the conflict as a “religious war,” and called for Gaza to be “leveled.” Three weeks later, he said that the number of civilian casualties would not lead him to question Israel’s goal of uprooting Hamas, placing the human cost of the war outside his political calculations.
The rhetoric escalated in May 2024, when he compared the war on Gaza to the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In an interview on Meet the Press, he said the United States “decided to end the war by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki … and that was the right decision,” before adding: “Give Israel the bombs it needs to end the war it can’t afford to lose.”
Those remarks drew widespread condemnation. Hamas said they reflected “moral depravity and a genocidal mindset,” while the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, Nihon Hidankyo, demanded they be withdrawn. The mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki also condemned them, and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or ICAN, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning group, said they legitimized means prohibited under international humanitarian law.
This rhetoric continued in its treatment of Palestinians. In March 2024, he said that Palestinian children were being taught through UNRWA and other bodies to kill all Jews, and called for the Palestinian education system to be uprooted and destroyed. On July 4 of the same year, he described Palestinians in Gaza as “the most radicalized population on the planet,” said they were indoctrinated to hate Jews from birth, likened the slogan “from the river to the sea” to the Nazi “Final Solution,” and described Hamas fighters as “Nazi SS.” His critics saw this rhetoric as broadening the circle of accusation to encompass Palestinian society as a whole.
In July 2025, Graham turned to defending the postwar phase. In an interview with Meet the Press, he said Israel would do in Gaza “what we did in Tokyo and Berlin: take the place by force and start over,” with “the Arabs” later taking over the administration of Gaza and the West Bank. When asked whether that course could mean the hostages would not return alive, he replied, “I hope not.” Those remarks came alongside reports published by Haaretz about Israeli plans to gradually annex the Gaza Strip.
Graham maintained the same approach in later stages of the war. On Oct. 31, 2025, he said during the annual summit of the Republican Jewish Coalition: “We’re killing all the right people, and cutting your taxes.” At the same event, he also called for putting Hamas “on a clock,” arguing that all options become available if it does not surrender its weapons.
Netanyahu and “Israel first” in American politics
Graham built his vision of the Middle East on the premise that Israeli security should be the axis of US policy. He treated confronting Iran as the region’s top priority, while viewing Arab-Israeli normalization as the goal that should reshape the region. In his final years, he appeared increasingly like a translator of Israeli priorities inside Washington, turning many of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government’s positions into stances, legislation and political pressure within Congress.
That orientation was especially clear during the Israeli-American war on Iran in 2025. After the Israeli operation against Iranian facilities, which Israel called Rising Lion, he declared that “Israel’s war is our war,” describing the operation as “amazing” and perhaps “the most successful coordinated military-intelligence campaign in the history of the Jewish state.” Before the strike was carried out, he had been among the most prominent voices urging it forward, warning against calls for restraint and arguing that “those counseling against involvement ignore the consequences of leaving evil unchecked.”
His position on the Iranian nuclear file was in line with that approach. He rejected any settlement that would allow Tehran to retain uranium enrichment capabilities, called for the complete dismantling of its nuclear program, and joined Sens. Tom Cotton and Ted Budd in introducing a resolution declaring that the condition was the only acceptable basis for any agreement. He also described Iran’s leaders as “almost religious Nazis” who write calls for Israel’s destruction on the sides of their missiles, and said any negotiations must begin with Iranian recognition of Israel’s right to exist, arguing that negotiating with a regime calling for its destruction was “a moral abyss, not a political gap.”
In the final months of his life, he adopted a more layered position on the US-Iran agreement. In June 2026, he defended the memorandum of understanding reached by the Trump administration with Tehran, while stressing that it would most likely fail, saying: “Let’s try a diplomatic solution. I think it’s going to fail.” He linked that failure to the option of force, threatening that the United States could take control of the Strait of Hormuz if necessary.
He also proposed what he called the “new policy”: that any attack carried out by Iran’s proxies against Israel should be met with a direct response against Iran itself. At times, this position placed him to the right of the Trump administration, after the president and Vice President JD Vance criticized Israeli strikes on Hezbollah while Graham continued pushing for further escalation.
This vision also extended to the issue of Arab-Israeli normalization, which he regarded as one of the central pillars of reshaping the region. After the strikes on Iran, he said his next goal was to push Saudi Arabia and Israel toward normalization, arguing that weakening Iran could open the door to a “historic moment.” He tied that path to the destruction of Hamas and the disarmament of Hezbollah, saying, “I won’t even get close to normalization before Iran’s proxies are unable to produce another Oct. 7.”
Closing the chapter on a brazen Zionist
With Lindsey Graham’s death, the chapter closes on one of the most Zionist and extreme American politicians in his defense of the Israeli occupation, and one of the lawmakers most willing to justify war, settlement expansion, displacement, and even nuclear comparisons, without equivocation or regard for the human cost.
But his death does not mean closing the chapter on US support for Israel, nor does it signal a change in the political structure that for decades has provided military and diplomatic cover for the occupation’s crimes against Palestinians and the peoples of the region. Graham was less an exception within the American establishment than a concentrated expression of a powerful current inside it, and what made his influence possible was a political and party system, along with lobbying networks, that extend beyond the impact of any single individual.
At the same time, the American political environment appears less tolerant of this rhetoric than it was a decade or two ago. The genocidal war on Gaza has broadened the space for solidarity with the Palestinian people inside American society, and pushed wider segments of voters, especially younger ones, to question US policy toward Israel. Positions once considered part of Washington’s unquestioned consensus have become the subject of growing debate and electoral pressure.
Perhaps the significance of Graham’s death lies precisely in this timing: He exits the scene at a moment when the political space is beginning to narrow for models that offered unconditional support to Israel, and are now being confronted in universities, the media and electoral arenas with questions that were not asked with the same intensity before Oct. 7. That shift may not be enough to change US policy in the foreseeable future, but it shows that the rhetoric Graham represented no longer enjoys the consensus on which it relied throughout his political career.