As Washington prepares to lay longtime Republican Senator Lindsey Graham to rest just 24 hours ahead of his scheduled funeral, explosive unpublished footage from a three-year documentary project has laid bare the South Carolina lawmaker’s unfiltered private enthusiasm for the US-backed Israeli war on Iran, including a shocking unilateral offer of direct American military intervention to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for an expanded conflict in Lebanon.
The never-before-seen clips were captured by British documentary filmmaker Alex Holder, who embedded with Graham between 2021 and 2024 to produce a film examining Graham’s close political ties to former President Donald Trump and Netanyahu. According to a Monday report from *The Wall Street Journal*, Holder was granted extraordinary access to Graham’s closed-door staff meetings on Capitol Hill, as well as private conversations between the senator and global leaders, including Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
In one of the earliest clips, filmed five days after the US-Israeli invasion of Iran was launched, Graham can be seen watching Trump’s press briefing with his Capitol Hill staff, visibly elated as he reacts to the start of the conflict. “I almost cried. How long have we been pushing this?” Graham asked his team. He went on to praise Trump’s handling of the war, noting that many within the former president’s own administration had pushed back against launching military action. “Trump loves blowing stuff up. There were a lot of people inside that didn’t want to do it, so I’ve had my challenges. When he gets into the zone, he listens, asks good questions, no tweeting… He’s been a great wartime president.” Graham went on to compare the Trump-Netanyahu partnership to the iconic World War II alliance of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, calling the pair “the right two guys to confront this evil.”
A second, even more controversial clip captures Graham during a speakerphone call with Netanyahu in his Senate office, where he extended a unilateral offer of direct US military participation in a potential Israeli offensive against Lebanon, amid heightened cross-border escalation between Israel and Hezbollah that accompanied the Iranian invasion. “I’m just so impressed, glad to be your friend,” Graham opened the call. “I’m going to meet with the president this weekend at Doral, Trump’s golf club in Florida. I’m going to try to get him to join with y’all in Lebanon, maybe fly some missions with you. Would you like that?” Netanyahu declined the overture, responding that Israel’s immediate military focus remained fixed on Iran, warning that a full-scale attack on Hezbollah would force the militant group into an all-out confrontation that would not serve Israeli interests. Graham accepted the rejection, framing the proposal as merely an exploratory idea and thanking Netanyahu for his input.
A third clip, recorded as Graham rode in a vehicle, captures him on a call with former White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan laying out a sweeping timeline for the collapse of Iranian resistance. “To be honest with you, I think in three to four weeks we should have them in a spot where they start losing control of some cities,” Graham said of Iranian government control. “What we’re trying to do is just get a few cities to fall in the next month. Get the Arabs more openly involved by the end of the week, and just have almost irreversible momentum.” Five months after that call was recorded, that anticipated momentum has still failed to materialize, the Journal noted.
The report also detailed behind-the-scenes friction between Graham and other senior Trump administration officials, outlined in unreleased conversations. Graham repeatedly criticized Trump’s top negotiators—Middle East peace envoy Steve Witkoff and the former president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner—arguing the pair were unfit to lead talks on Gaza and Iran. “I can’t do it with Jared, and I can’t do it with Witkoff. They’re just too conflicted. It’s gotta be Rubio,” Graham is quoted as saying, referencing Florida Senator Marco Rubio.
Holder told the Journal that Graham enjoyed closer personal and political ties to Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman than any other sitting US official, and that he was extended royal-level treatment every time he traveled to Israel to meet with Netanyahu and leadership of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Graham privately complained repeatedly that most of Trump’s inner circle opposed the war on Iran and pushed for a negotiated settlement, creating constant obstacles to his long-held policy goals. “Very few people are out selling this war from the administration. I’m shocked,” he reportedly told the filmmaker. At the same time, he reveled in the heightened media attention he received after the war— which he had advocated for decades—began, telling the crew, “We could do a media show every two seconds.”
Graham, 71, died suddenly earlier this month from an acute aortic dissection, just over 22 years after he was first elected to the US Senate in 2002. Over his two-decade Senate career, he established himself as one of the most vocal proponents of interventionist US foreign policy in Washington, drawing intense international criticism for his unwavering pro-war stance and staunch support for Israeli expansion. He was a consistent leading advocate for increased US military aid to Israel, including backing funding for Israeli illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. Israeli leaders have publicly hailed Graham as one of the country’s closest friends in Washington, with President Isaac Herzog emphasizing that his support for Israel never wavered.
Throughout Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza, which has been labeled genocidal by multiple international human rights bodies and legal scholars, Graham repeatedly defended Israeli military actions and blocked congressional efforts to restrict US military aid to the country. His public comments repeatedly drew fierce condemnation from Palestinian rights groups, human rights organizations, and Muslim civil rights groups. In a July 2024 social media post that sparked widespread outrage, Graham described Gaza’s Palestinian population as “the most radicalized population on the planet who are taught to hate Jews from birth.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the comments as hateful, absurd, and a promotion of dangerous racist stereotypes against Palestinians. Graham also drew heavy criticism for suggesting Israel should consider using military tactics comparable to the US atomic bombings of Japan in World War II, a remark opponents decried as dangerously inflammatory.
In a 2019 visit to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Graham declared Israeli security and prosperity to be a core US national interest, and publicly called on the US to formally recognize Israeli sovereignty over the territory, which it seized from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War. Earlier this year, he publicly blamed Saudi Arabia for refusing to join the US-Israeli coalition against Iran, and warned of unspecified “consequences” for any nation that declined to back military action against Tehran.