Late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., spent his final months privately pressing President Donald Trump and foreign leaders to widen the war against Iran, at one point drawing a rare word of restraint from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to unreleased documentary footage reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The material, drawn from more than 400 hours captured over the past three years by British filmmaker Alex Holder for a project titled “Lindsey’s Game,” offers a posthumous window into the South Carolina Republican’s role at the center of Trump’s second-term foreign policy in the weeks before his sudden death on July 11.
The most striking exchange came March 4, days after the U.S. and Israel opened the current campaign against Iran.
Graham, planning a Florida trip to urge Trump to join Israel in striking Hezbollah in Lebanon, put the idea to Netanyahu by phone.
The prime minister, on speakerphone, pushed back.
“We’re concentrating right now on Iran,” Netanyahu said, according to the footage.
“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.”
Graham dropped the plan, replying, “That’s actually good counsel.”
Elsewhere, Graham is shown reacting to the opening strikes with something close to elation.
