Sen. Lindsey Graham expressed doubt Sunday that U.S. negotiations with Iran would prove fruitful and called on President Donald Trump to follow through with his threats to strike Iranian energy infrastructure.
“I think we’ve hit a wall when it comes to negotiations,” Graham, a longtime Iran hawk, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
He said the U.S. should take steps to further weaken Iran as a way of pressuring the country’s leaders to accept a deal. “The energy infrastructure is their soft underbelly. If you go back to the fight, I’d put energy on top of the list,” Graham said.
Trump issued a stark warning for Iran on Sunday, telling Axios that “the clock is ticking” for Iran to propose a new deal to end the war.
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“For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them,” Trump wrote Sunday on Truth Social.
Trump reportedly met Saturday with top members of his national security team to discuss the next steps in Iran as the ongoing standoff shows no signs of a breakthrough, according to CNN. The meeting was held at the president’s Virginia golf club with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff in attendance.
The war between the U.S. and Iran has dragged on for 11 weeks. Although a tenuous ceasefire is technically still in place, both sides have exchanged strikes as they jockey for control of the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial global shipping hub through which a significant portion of the world’s oil supplies travel. Trump described the truce as being on “massive life support” last Monday.
The president also said the U.S. still has multiple levers at its disposal, including targeting energy infrastructure, to put pressure on Iran.
“We’ve done tremendous damage, but we didn’t touch everything,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News on Friday. “I didn’t underestimate anything. We hit them unbelievably hard. Look, we left their bridges. We left their electricity capacity. We can knock that all out in two days. Two days. Everything,” the president added.
Both the U.S. and Iran have targeted energy infrastructure as the conflict escalates. The United Arab Emirates, a close U.S. ally, reported a fire near the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant on Sunday. UAE state media reported that the fire was caused by a drone strike and there was no impact on radiological safety levels.
“The United Arab Emirates has condemned in the strongest terms the unprovoked terrorist attack … carried out by a drone that entered the country’s territory from the western border direction,” the UAE said in a statement to Emirates News Agency. The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the attack marked a “dangerous escalation,” but did not blame any country for the strike.
A top Iranian national security official, Ebrahim Azizi, announced Friday that Iran will soon charge tolls along a specific route in the Strait of Hormuz.
The new fees will attempt to circumvent U.S. control over the waterway through military actions like Project Freedom, Trump’s operation to use the U.S. military to escort commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz. While the initial operation was paused after 24 hours to promote truce negotiations, last weekend Trump pitched relaunching it as “Project Freedom Plus.”
“This route will remain closed to the operators of the so‑called ‘freedom project,’” Azizi wrote in a post on X.
Trump’s positive view of the negotiations appeared to break down as he traveled to China last week for a summit with President Xi Jinping. China is the largest purchaser of Iranian oil, and Xi has openly opposed U.S. militarization in the Strait of Hormuz.
After speaking to his Chinese counterpart, Trump said Xi had agreed that the waterway should be open — but it remains unclear if China will join forces with the U.S. to ensure the strait remains open to commercial traffic.
“He’d [Xi] like to see it opened up,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on the way home from the summit. When asked if Xi had agreed to put pressure on Iran to open the strait, Trump responded, “I’m not asking for any favors because when you ask for favors, you have to do favors in return.”
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