Lindsey Graham died Saturday at 71, and within hours, Israel's national security minister, the Israeli prime minister, and Ukraine's president were among those rushing to praise him. That speed itself told a story: few American senators had woven themselves into the fabric of global power the way Graham had.
The tributes came fast because Graham's reach was vast. He had traveled relentlessly to shape what America's role in the world should look like, visited troops overseas routinely, and sat close enough to Donald Trump to whisper in his ear on matters of war and peace. But the legacy those eulogies celebrated was tangled with decades of consequential decisions, some of which left hundreds of thousands dead.
Graham entered the Senate in 2003, just as Colin Powell stood before the United Nations to argue that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. The Iraqi leader's claim that he had none was "a flat-out lie," Graham said then, backing Bush's imminent invasion. "He either needs to be disarmed or replaced." The war that followed killed hundreds of thousands. No weapons were found. Historians have called it among the worst foreign policy blunders in American history. Graham moved on without looking back.
A former Air Force lawyer and member of the South Carolina Air National Guard, Graham had built his career as a neoconservative hawk. He pushed for years to isolate Iran, limit its nuclear program, and contain its influence across the Middle East. He opposed Obama's nuclear deal. In 2015, he called for military action that would reduce Iran's military to "a shell of its former self."
Then Trump arrived. Graham had been a fierce critic, but by 2016, as Trump's nomination became unstoppable, something shifted. Graham transformed into Trump's confidant, golf partner, and frequent White House visitor. Adam Schiff, the Democratic senator from California, called him "the Trump whisperer." If you wanted to know what Trump was thinking, Schiff said on Sunday, you asked Lindsey.
Graham applauded Trump's strikes on Iranian nuclear sites last year. He was arguably one of the most persuasive voices urging Trump toward war in February, despite reported hesitation from others like JD Vance. Speaking to Politico in March, Graham said he had spent months trying to persuade Trump that overthrowing Iran's leadership could be a defining second-term achievement, comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Even after the war began, he continued trying to shape it. Last month he posted that anyone claiming Iran was now stronger was insulting the American military and engaged in "delusional thinking."
The position rattled the "Make America great again" movement, which had backed Trump partly because he promised to end "forever wars" like the Iraq quagmire. Iranian state television, in announcing Graham's death, was blunt. "I congratulate the great nation of Iran on Lindsey Graham, the warmongering and anti-Iranian US senator, having gone to hell," an anchor said.
Yet Graham's worldview was not uniformly hawkish in one direction. He was a stalwart of Cold War Republican thinking and threw himself into supporting Ukraine against Vladimir Putin. He had visited Ukraine for the tenth time just before his death, working on a sanctions package against Russia. Finland's president called him a "Transatlanticist" and friend. Germany's chancellor said he had been a partner "for more than four decades."
The paradox was that while Graham seemed to pull Trump back from admiration for dictators like Putin and Kim Jong-un, he ultimately remained loyal to Trump beyond what many considered prudent. Trump himself has praised Putin as "strong" and "very smart" and had berated Zelenskyy in their first Oval Office meeting. Brett Bruen, who directed global engagement under Obama, noted that Graham's recent interventions "seemed to prevent us from doing bad deals with the Kremlin." His death, Bruen suggested, raised the question of whether guardrails had just come down.
On Israel and Gaza, Graham's support never wavered. He backed Israel's war against Hamas with unwavering ferocity. In May 2024, when Washington paused some military aid to Israel, he pressed the defense secretary to "give Israel what they need to fight the war." He compared the threat Israel faced to "Hiroshima and Nagasaki on steroids." Later that year, he posted that "the Palestinians in Gaza are the most radicalized population on the planet who are taught to hate Jews from birth." His support drew admiration from Israel's far-right figures but anger across the Arab world.
In April, Graham attended a British embassy garden party with King Charles and Queen Camilla. When approached by reporters, he was relaxed and chatty. He mentioned speaking with Trump that day. Unburdened by doubt about American interventions in Venezuela and Iran, he made a cheerful prediction: Cuba would be next.
Author James Rodriguez: "Graham's death removes a singular voice from Trump's orbit, and the question now is whether Trump loses a restraint or gains freedom to pursue his more transactional approach to global power."
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