Sen. Lindsay Graham said the United States does not have a responsibility to create a sustainable government for Iran following President Donald Trump’s weekend attacks that resulted in the death of Iran’s supreme leader and many of the country’s senior officials.
Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, has for months been a key voice calling for military intervention in Iran to facilitate regime change. But when asked about what the administration planned to do next, Graham said U.S. involvement would be limited and that the people of Iran would have to chart their own future.
“It’s not his [Trump’s] job or my job to do this,” Graham said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “How many times do I have to tell you? Our job is to make sure Iran is no longer the largest state sponsor of terrorism, to help the people reconstruct a new government. No boots on the ground.”
He also demurred when asked if the U.S. was at war.
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“I don’t know if this is technically a war,” Graham told host Kristen Welker.
Over the weekend, Trump announced the U.S. had joined Israel in targeted strikes on senior Iranian leadership. The move set off a wave of retaliatory exchanges between Iran and Israel and strikes on American military bases in the region. As of Sunday morning, at least three American service members have died along with hundreds of civilians in Iran and nearly a dozen in Israel.
The decision to move to war came without prior congressional approval, though a White House official told NOTUS on Saturday that the White House informed the Armed Services Committee “after strikes had commenced.”
The New York Times reported last month that Iran’s supreme leader of 37 years, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had passed down a succession plan in case of his assassination, but no details of that plan were disclosed at the time. It is not clear as of Sunday who else under Khamenei’s leadership may have been killed.
In an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Republican Sen. Tom Cotton would not confirm if the United States is seeking a regime change or a managed transition, like the one that elevated interim leader Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela after the capture of Nicolás Maduro.
“It’s not a simple answer,” Cotton told CNN’s Dana Bash. “I’m sure, though, that there are some leaders inside of Iran who might be jockeying to audition for the role of Iran’s Delcy Rodríguez.”
In his post on Truth Social announcing Khamenei’s death, Trump said, “Hopefully, the IRGC and Police will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots, and work together as a unit to bring back the Country to the Greatness it deserves.”
Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, in a separate interview with “Meet the Press,” said he was concerned that the White House was operating on hope.
“Hope is not a strategy,” Kelly said. “We got to have a plan here. I mean, what is the strategic goal, and how do we achieve it?”
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