Real-Time Documentary Captured Senator Graham’s Push to Start War with Iran
A filmmaker followed Graham for 3 years covering visits with Trump and Netanyahu.
Graham’s Obsessive Push for Iran War
The Wall Street Journal reports Unreleased Documentary Footage Captures Graham’s Obsessive Push for Iran War – Free LInk
Sen. Lindsey Graham planned to travel to Florida in early March to persuade President Trump to join Israel in the bombing of Hezbollah in Lebanon—until a friend talked him out of it.
The friend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told him on a call before the trip that bringing the U.S. into the operation, in the midst of the Iran war, was going too far, too fast, according to unreleased footage from a documentary about the South Carolina Republican lawmaker that was being filmed before he died earlier this month.
“We’re concentrating right now on Iran,” Netanyahu said on the March 4 call, according to the footage, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal. “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. And right now that’s not our interest,” he said on speakerphone.
“That’s actually good counsel,” Graham replied from his Senate office, which was covered with Trump hats, scattered papers and Planters Peanuts, with a bottle of bourbon on the shelf.
The extraordinary exchange was captured by the documentary filmmaker Alex Holder, who had been granted extensive access to Graham since 2023.
“Look what we’ve done here. I almost cried,” he tells the crew, laughing loudly just after U.S. strikes on Iran began in February. “How long have we been pushing this?”
He then tells the crew that Trump was equally happy about the war. “I talked to Trump this morning, he’s jacked, he said, ‘best thing I have ever done.’ He loves blowing stuff up.”
The footage shows the documentary crew regularly traveling with Graham, sitting in the back seat and filming as he takes phone calls from the front seat. Graham let the crew stay in the room for sensitive meetings, and some of the people Graham spoke with by phone told the Journal they didn’t know the calls were being recorded.
It includes Graham flying to meet with Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to sell him on the war in Iran; calling the military commanders about the war; speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; huddling with other world leaders; and expressing candid thoughts on a range of American political figures.
The footage also shows Graham’s occasional frustration with Trump, particularly for signing a preliminary deal with Iran in June. The project’s final interview was at a bagel shop in Columbia, S.C., in June, weeks before his death. Graham then says even Trump is growing too wobbly on the war. “He’s letting this thing slip away,” Graham said. “I got to go talk to him.”
Graham said Trump didn’t care about abortion, according to Holder.
At one point, when Graham looked “absolutely disheveled and exhausted,” Holder said, the senator complained that others weren’t helping him.
“He’d say, ‘There’s no way I can die yet,’” Holder said.
Netanyahu Meets Trump Tomorrow
Reuters reports Netanyahu Says Iran Is Top Agenda in Meeting with Trump
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu departed to Washington on Monday, where he said he would meet U.S. President Donald Trump for their first face-to-face talks since the start of their conflict with Iran.
It will be Netanyahu’s eighth meeting with Trump since the U.S. president returned to office, and their first since February, right before Israel and the United States launched a joint aerial campaign against Iran.Israel had not taken part in a two-week U.S. bombing campaign this month that provoked Tehran to fire on U.S. bases in response.
Trump halted the campaign over the weekend. Iran said it would suspend its own attacks for as long as the U.S. pause endures. Israel has warned Tehran that any attack would trigger a forceful Israeli response.An acrimonious phone call in June where the president called the prime minister “fucking crazy”, first leaked to the media and later publicly confirmed by Trump himself, laid bare the strains that have at times emerged between the two leaders.
In an apparent gesture to Trump on Sunday, Israel said it would allow a multinational security force to enter Gaza as proposed under Trump’s peace plan for the enclave.
Netanyahu Gets his White House Meeting
Politico reports Netanyahu Gets his White House Meeting
Netanyahu has not been to the White House since the war began and has been angling for an invitation since at least April, two people familiar with the matter said, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy. The funeral of close Netanyahu confidant Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) provided an opening, though negotiations over the visit were only just finalized.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected at the White House this week at a moment of significant tension between the longtime allies — after months of waiting for an invitation to come.
Netanyahu has not been to the White House since the war began and has been angling for an invitation since at least April, two people familiar with the matter said, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy. The funeral of close Netanyahu confidant Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) provided an opening, though negotiations over the visit were only just finalized.
“At first there was no meeting. They arranged it in the last couple of days,” one of the people familiar with the matter said Friday, adding that Netanyahu is eager to consult with President Donald Trump about the escalation with Iran as well as the U.S. nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia.
Israel was the first to publicly confirm the Tuesday meeting; Trump acknowledged the visit in a rambling speech at the White House correspondents dinner late Friday. The White House did not respond to requests for comment about why the invitation took so long or what the pair will discuss
The tension between the two leaders is particularly notable because the Trump administration is currently waging the aggressive military campaign against Iran that Netanyahu has been pushing for. For much of the past two weeks, the U.S. had been launching daily strikes against Iran, though the administration said it paused those strikes over the weekend.
Netanyahu, who helped convince Trump to launch the initial attacks against Iran in February, could bear the blame if this latest campaign doesn’t bring Iran back to the negotiating table or restore passage for ships through the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump and Netanyahu last met face to face in February, in the lead-up to the war, which Trump at the time predicted would last four to five weeks. That was nearly five months ago.
Credit and Blame
Trump was pressured into a stupid war by Netanyahu along with Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz.
Had it turned out OK, Trump would have taken all the credit. Blame is another matter.
That won’t stop Netanyahu from pushing for more war.
However, Trump is not happy about weapons depletion, gasoline prices, or bond yields since he started this mess.
Trump can blame others, but polls show where the blame truly belongs.
All that remains to be seen is how much slack there is in the strings between Netanyahu the puppeteer and Trump the pathetic puppet.
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