South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham was called out after he predicted on Fox News that the U.S. is "gonna obliterate" Iran's nuclear program by the time the recently-initiated war with the country is over, prompting critics to point out that he directly contradicted President Donald Trump's own claim from last summer.
Graham, discussing the war that began after the U.S., with the joint coordination of Israel, launched strikes against Iran on February 28, claimed Trump is “the right guy at the right time” because of Tehran’s supposed nuclear program.
He said:
"Now, President Trump, thank God he was there. He's the right guy at the right time."
"When he heard they were that close to 10 [nuclear] weapons, he acted. And you know what? When this is over, we’re gonna obliterate their nuclear program and there’s gonna be a new dawn in the Mideast.”
"President Trump ... you literally saved the world from terrorism."
You can hear what Graham said in the video below.
However, Graham's claim contradicts one Trump made following his unilateral decision to bomb Iran last June.
Findings contradict Trump’s repeated assertions that the facilities were “completely and totally obliterated.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth echoed that claim at the time, also saying Iran’s nuclear ambitions had been “obliterated.”
An early U.S. intelligence assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that the military strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites failed to eliminate the core infrastructure of the country’s nuclear program. The report indicated the attacks likely delayed Iran’s capabilities by only a few months.
Sources familiar with the intelligence available at the time said Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile remained largely untouched. One source noted that the country’s centrifuges were “largely intact,” while another said the uranium had likely been moved out of the targeted facilities before the strikes.
Graham was swiftly criticized.
Trump was similarly called out last year after he gloated to reporters in the Netherlands that his decision to bomb Iran was akin to the World War II bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that "ended the war."
The ethical and legal grounds for the bombings remain a subject of intense debate. Advocates argue that the employment of atomic bombs was an essential measure to hasten the conclusion of the war with minimal loss of life.
On the contrary, critics contend that the bombings were excessive for achieving the war's cessation, branding them as an affront to morality and ethics, highlighting the deliberate nuclear assault on civilian populations as a grave war crime.
Trump's claim that "if we didn't take that out they'd be fighting right now," referencing Iran's uranium stockpile, has aged like milk considering the war that has erupted since.
@jman42/Bluesky
@SecretaryBurgum/X
@Doug Ellin/X
@evanrachelwood/Instagram