U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) reacts on the day of the first presidential debate hosted by CNN in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., June 27, 2024.(photo credit: REUTERS/MARCO BELLO)
Sen. Lindsey Graham criticized Biden’s proportional response suggestion, urging Israel to defend itself against Iran’s nuclear ambitions and threats.
The idea of telling Israel what targets to strike ignores reality and “is the mentality that existed in the 1930s,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said in a statement provided to the Jerusalem Post on Thursday in response to President Biden saying the G7 agreed Israel has a right to respond to Iran’s missile attack but should do so proportionally.
On Wednesday, Biden spoke with G7 countries — the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom — on the Israeli-Iranian crisis as the proxy war between the two arch-foes threatened to spill over into a larger regional conflict. The G7 discussed Iran’s “unacceptable attack against Israel” and the need for a coordinated response, including additional sanctions on Iran, the White House said.
Biden on Wednesday also said he would not support an Israeli strike on an Iranian nuclear facility.
“When it comes to Iran, the regime is a theocracy dedicated to destroying the Jewish state, driving the West out of the Middle East, and stopping reconciliation between the Arab world and Israel,” Graham said.
IRAN’S SUPREME LEADER Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting with President Masoud Pezeshkian and his cabinet in Tehran, last month. (credit: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/West Asia News Agency/Reuters) He described the Ayatollah as a “religious Nazi.”
Graham urges Israel to defend against threat
“Iran is not trying to build peaceful nuclear power plants,” he said. “The regime is trying to build a nuclear bomb to achieve its religious objectives. If you don’t understand that, you’re not listening to what Iran is saying, and you’re not watching what they are doing throughout the world.”
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Graham said he believed if Iran had a nuclear weapon, the Ayatollah would use it against Israel.
“For the sake of our friends in Israel, we cannot allow the world to miscalculate Iran, just as it did with Hitler and the Nazis,” he said. “Would a proportional response be launching 200 ballistic missiles from Israel into Iran, mimicking what the Iranians did to Israel?
“To my friends in Israel, one holocaust directed at the Jewish people is enough,” he added. “Do what you have to do to defend yourselves against those who would kill you simply because you are Jewish.”
Graham is among a number of Republicans calling for maximum pressure against Iran in response to its attacks this week.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul said the Biden-Harris administration should place maximum pressure on Iran and its proxies rather than pressure Israel for a ceasefire.
