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Congress’s staunchest advocate for war with Iran, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), said on Monday that a victory for the U.S. in the current conflict would entail the opening of the Strait of Hormuz — which was already open prior to the war that the U.S. and Israel started unprovoked.
In an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Monday, Graham said that “victory to me would be regaining freedom of navigation of Strait of Hormuz.”
Implicit in Graham’s comment is that the ability of the U.S. to declare victory depends on Iran, which has blockaded the strait in response to U.S.-Israeli aggression.
It is ironic considering that the strait would likely still be open for transit, as it has been for decades, if the U.S. and Israel had not launched the war that has killed over 1,200 civilians in Iran, including hundreds of children. Effectively, Graham is saying that the condition for winning the war would be to return to the pre-war circumstances, making the war itself moot. Graham has spent decades advocating for this war, and had lobbied the Trump administration hard to launch the war.
Graham also said that he thinks victory would mean threatening to destroy Kharg Island, “degrad[ing] their military capability a bit further,” and normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, with the latter being the “ultimate victory.”
He also said that he supports the idea of the U.S. arming the people of Iran to oppose their government. It’s unclear how this plan, which Trump appeared to allude to in remarks on Tuesday, would work.
Earlier in the war, the Trump administration said that it was trying to arm Iranian dissidents through Kurdish groups. But these claims were not verified, and were outright rejected by at least one Kurdish leader. There has been no news of such an insurgency since.
Graham suggested that Kurdish people were instead stealing the weapons, without evidence, but said that “I love the idea of empowering the Iranian people with weapons.”
The senator also dismissed the pain being caused to the American people via price hikes.
“I know gas prices are high and I know we’re suffering right now. But you pay now, you pay later against thugs like Iran,” he said, and repeated the Trump administration’s debunked assertion that Iran was attempting to create a nuclear weapon.
“They tried to get a nuclear weapon, and if you don’t believe that, you shouldn’t be allowed to drive in your hometown,” Graham said, somewhat inexplicably.
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