American and foreign leaders gathered in Washington on Tuesday to honor the late Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the most influential voices in American foreign policy and among the most forceful advocates in Congress for Israel and the use of military power against U.S. adversaries.
The commemorations began with a ceremony at the Capitol before Graham’s casket was taken to Washington National Cathedral for the funeral. President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky attended, along with members of Congress, senior officials and diplomats.
Graham died on July 11 at 71, after more than three decades in Congress. He was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1994, then won a Senate seat in 2002 and took office the following year.
Over the course of that career, he became one of the Republican Party’s most prominent foreign policy hawks, pressing for higher military spending, support for traditional American alliances and direct intervention in conflicts abroad. But his influence extended beyond his votes and public statements. He was also an energetic political broker who maintained relationships across party lines and had unusual access to the White House.
His relationship with Trump marked one of the most striking turns of his later career. After strongly opposing him during the 2016 presidential campaign, Graham became one of his closest allies in the Senate and an informal adviser on foreign policy. He remained close to the president until his death, despite periodic disagreements over Ukraine, Russia and other issues.
In the Middle East, Graham embraced a view of American policy centered on Israel’s security and confrontation with Iran.
He was among the strongest defenders in Congress of Israeli military operations and resisted efforts to restrict U.S. military support, even as criticism of the war in Gaza mounted and civilian casualties rose. He also insisted that advanced weapons sales to Arab governments preserve Israel’s qualitative military edge.
Yet Graham did not view the alliance with Israel separately from Washington’s relationships with the Gulf states. He sought to fold them into a broader regional arrangement built around American-Gulf security cooperation, Arab normalization with Israel and a common front against Iran.
That approach was especially visible in his efforts to broker an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel. He promoted a package that would combine normalization with a U.S.-Saudi defense agreement, cooperation on the kingdom’s civilian nuclear program and provisions addressing the Palestinian issue.
Graham saw Saudi-Israeli normalization as potentially the defining diplomatic achievement of the postwar period, one that could reshape the region’s political and security order.
Axios reported that in the final weeks of his life, he was working on a new initiative to revive the effort after Israel’s elections in October and the U.S. midterm elections in November. The initiative did not reach the stage of a formal agreement, but it reflected his determination to keep Saudi-Israeli normalization near the top of Washington’s regional agenda.
Graham’s relationships in the region also produced sharply different views of him across the Arab world.
Akeel Abbas, an Iraqi scholar, told MBN that parts of Arab public opinion viewed him negatively, particularly after the Oct. 7 attacks and the war in Gaza, because his rhetoric and policies approached the region’s conflicts “through Israeli eyes.”
Arab governments allied with Washington often saw him differently. According to Abbas, they regarded him as an influential senator with direct access to the White House and the ability to shape its decisions. Graham supported American assistance to Jordan and Egypt and stronger ties with the United Arab Emirates, particularly after it joined the Abraham Accords.
Fahad al-Shulaimi, head of the Middle East Center for Strategic Studies in Kuwait, described Graham’s relationships with Gulf and other Arab leaders as “strong and important.” He said Graham’s positions toward those governments were “very positive,” despite reports that he had pressed Gulf states to become involved in the war against Iran.
On Iran, Graham made no secret of his belief that diplomacy and sanctions alone would not be enough.
He repeatedly called for strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, supported Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign, and demanded military responses to attacks by groups aligned with Tehran. He also advocated closer military coordination among the United States, Israel and the Gulf states to protect shipping in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.
In his final years, he became increasingly explicit in calling for regime change in Iran and sought to persuade Trump to support the use of force to achieve it.
Footage from a documentary filmed during the last years of his life showed him pressing the administration to join military operations against Iran and urging support for a broader Israeli campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Graham was not merely observing these policies from the Senate. He tried to shape them through his relationships with Trump, Netanyahu and other leaders.
Those positions made him both influential and deeply polarizing.
His supporters saw him as a steadfast defender of American alliances and of countries he believed were threatened by Russia, Iran or armed groups. His support for Ukraine and Israel was among the reasons Zelensky and Netanyahu traveled to Washington for his funeral.
His critics saw him as one of Washington’s most persistent advocates of military intervention and as a politician who treated force as an early option rather than a last resort. He supported the Iraq war and military operations in Afghanistan, and later called for a broader confrontation with Iran and its allies, even as the American public grew increasingly weary of overseas wars.
Still, Graham maintained working relationships with lawmakers in both parties, an increasingly uncommon trait in Congress. Colleagues remembered him this week for his powers of persuasion, his humor, and his willingness to immerse himself in some of the most difficult foreign policy debates, convinced that the United States could not afford to retreat from them.
After the ceremonies in Washington, Graham’s body will be taken to South Carolina, where a public service will be held in the state capital, Columbia. A procession and military honors will follow before his burial in his hometown of Central.
Graham leaves behind a vacant Senate seat, but also a legacy inseparable from the wars and alliances he championed. He spent his final years trying to keep the United States engaged abroad, even as growing numbers of Americans questioned the cost and purpose of that engagement.
