Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) stressed that Iran must change its regime policy of opposing Israel as a “prerequisite” to future peace negotiations between the nations.
President Donald Trump has said Iran will never rebuild its nuclear sites after bombing three of them over the weekend, a strike that Graham called “flawless.” While he argued that the ceasefire between Israel and Iran is “a good thing” if peace can be achieved, it could turn into “a step backward” if the latter country can rearm itself.
“There can be no peace between Iran and Israel until Iran decides to change their policy, which is the regime’s policy of destroying the state of Israel and killing all the Jews,” Graham said on Fox News’s America Reports. “Until that changes, nothing really changes. [Iran’s nuclear] program has been decimated, but the people who are in charge will come right back at Israel, so I am looking for regime change in this sense. For Iran to abandon its desire to destroy Israel, to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a nation. That to me is not too much to ask of the Iranians.”
The senator added that he is not advocating that U.S. troops be deployed in Iran to enact regime change. Rather, he argued there are two ways in which this change can be implemented: replace the country’s leaders “who don’t want to kill all the Jews,” or change the regime’s behavior.
Israel and Iran exchanged attacks shortly after Trump announced a ceasefire between the warring countries, angering the president. Graham sympathized with the frustration that Trump had, but argued that “there’s no moral equivalency” between the two countries, stating that Iran is “a fanatical religious Nazi regime” whereas Israel is a “democracy.”
Before the United States’s strikes against Iran, Graham urged Trump to “go all in” on military attacks to ensure “there’s nothing left standing” of Iran’s nuclear program. The senator has since defended Trump’s strikes and the president’s ability to enact such a decision since it was “within his Article II authority.”