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'I Almost Cried' - Documentary Video Trove Shows Lindsey Graham's Joy At Start Of Iran War

Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
Authored...

Batches of previously unreleased documentary footage give a behind-the-scenes look at the late Sen. Lindsey Graham's work to maneuver the United States into military conflicts on behalf of Israel, and the sheer joy he exuded when President Trump finally brought Graham's long-held dreams of an all-out war on Iran to fruition.  

The video comes from British documentary filmmaker Alex Holder, whom Graham had granted close, ongoing access from 2023 up until Graham's sudden death on July 11. Holder plans to release a documentary called "Lindsey's Game" later this year, but he's just released several samples from his hundreds of hours of footage. They fully cement Graham's reputation as a man who constantly pushed for war and found unparalleled joy in bringing destruction to foreign peoples. 

That latter dimension of Graham's twisted personality can be vividly seen and heard in footage of Graham in his Senate office in late February. He and is staff are watching Trump, on Fox News, bragging that "virtually everything [the Iranians] have has been knocked out."

Positively exuberant that massive US-Israeli attacks on Iran  had just begun, Graham laughs aloud with joy, then gushes to the documentary crew and his own staffers, “Look what we’ve done here. I almost cried. I mean, like, how long have we been pushing this?" Holder replies, "you've been pushing this for years." Graham laughs again and -- sounding just a child on Christmas morning -- says with dewy-eyed disbelief, "Right...it's here!" 

Graham says Trump is enjoying the war too. "I talked to Trump this morning -- he’s jacked. He said, ‘best thing I have ever done.’ He loves blowing stuff up.” We'd be remiss if we didn't remind readers that one of the first things Trump and the US Navy had already blown up in Graham's giddy early hours of the war was an elementary school in southern Iran. More than 150 civilians were killed at the Minab school, most of them girls between age 7 and 12.  

Iranians dig graves for more than 100 schoolgirls killed by US Tomahawk missiles in the opening round of the US-Israeli war on Iran (Iranian Press Center/AFP)

In another remarkable scene, we get to sit in a March 4 Graham phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom Graham had actively conspired to maneuver Trump into simultaneously blowing up Iran and blowing up Trump's many promises to break the cycle of never-ending US wars in the Middle East. The call starts with Graham greeting "Bibi" and sycophantically saying how "impressed" he is with Netanyahu. In what sounds like a thinly-veiled boast for the benefit of the documentary's eventual audience, Graham adds, "I'm glad to be your friend." 

That's nauseatingly entertaining, but what makes their ensuing strategy discussion so remarkable is that the infamously bellicose Netanyahu emerges as the relative voice of restraint. Graham tells Netanyahu that he intends to visit Trump in Florida to convince him to join Israel in its war with Lebanon's Hezbollah militia, but Netanyahu diplomatically tells Graham to take it easy.  

“We’re concentrating right now on Iran," Netanyahu replies. "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." Perhaps not wanting to fully spoil Graham's dreams of American service members being thrown into another conflict for Israel's benefit, Netanyahu offers, "We can do it later."

Another clip nicely illustrates just how wrong Graham and other promoters of the war on Iran have been about what would be be rapidly accomplished. In early March, as he's being driven across town, Graham tells documentarian Holder that, in "three or four weeks," the United States and Israel would "have them in a spot where they start losing control of some cities" and, with more open Arab involvement in the war, achieve "almost irreversible momentum."

Five months later, no cities have come even remotely close to falling. Instead, outraged over a war of aggression launched on their country on several bogus pretenses, support for the Iranian government has been galvanized. That's been manifested in many ways, but none greater than what may have been the largest funeral in the history of the world, as millions turned out earlier this month for a multi-day state funeral for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Continuing its long-running pattern of violating international norms that put heads of state off-limits -- and furthering its corruption of what little remains of US government geopolitical morality -- Israel collaborated with the United States to kill Khamenei, his daughter, son-in-law, and 14-month-old granddaughter in February's opening assault. 

In other footage reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Graham voices his disappointment that more Republican politicians aren't stepping up to promote the war on Iran, which quickly became the most unpopular major war in US history -- even less popular than what was observed in the worst polling on the Vietnam War. “Very few people are out selling this war from the administration. I’m shocked,” Graham says. 

The last footage recorded by the documentary crew  -- at a Columbia, SC bagel shop in June -- shows a Graham who's frustrated that Trump has signed a memorandum of understanding that was supposed to be a precursor to a lasting peace. “He’s letting this thing slip away,” Graham said. “I got to go talk to him.”

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