Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, has in recent weeks become one of the principal targets for a segment of the right increasingly alarmed by the prospect of Donald Trump widening the war against Iran.
Graham, long known for his hawkish foreign-policy stance and closeness to Mr. Trump, has drawn sharp criticism even from within his own party after publicly urging the administration to intensify military pressure on Iran and expand America’s overseas military presence.
“Washington’s war machine is running at full tilt. They are trying to drag us into Iran to turn it into another Iraq. We cannot allow that,” Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, wrote on X on Wednesday.
“And yes, when we speak of Washington’s war machine, we mean Lindsey Graham,” she added.
Her remarks came shortly after Graham, in an interview on Fox News Sunday last week, called on the U.S. Marines to seize Kharg Island—the main hub of Iran’s oil exports. “We took Iwo Jima, we can handle this too,” he said.
“Here’s what I tell President Trump,” Graham said. “Keep it up for a few more weeks, take Kharg Island, where all of their oil-production resources are concentrated, bring that island under control, and let this regime wither at the root.”
Earlier this month, in an interview on Fox News’s Hannity, Graham raised the possibility of sending additional troops overseas while also demanding that America’s Middle Eastern allies play a more active supporting role.
“I’m going back to South Carolina and asking them to send their sons and daughters to the Middle East,” Graham said. “And from our friends in the Middle East—from Saudi Arabia and others—I want one thing: step forward and say, ‘This is my war too. I am joining America. I am publicly taking part in bringing this regime down.’”
Those remarks—along with his long-standing support for the idea of overthrowing the Iranian regime—have rankled the Republican Party’s anti-interventionist wing, which fears both a broader conflict and the extent of Graham’s influence over the Trump administration’s policy.
What drew the fastest and harshest reaction, in particular, were his remarks suggesting that Americans should be prepared to send their children to war.
Mace, who is running in South Carolina’s gubernatorial race, responded on social media: “What on earth do you have to be thinking to say something like that?”
“I do not want to send South Carolina’s sons and daughters to war with Iran,” she added.
The conservative commentator Meghan McCain—the daughter of the late Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican—also lashed out at the man who was once her father’s closest friend in Washington.
“There is nothing better than a lonely, childless man in his seventies telling American mothers that they should send their children, possibly to die, to war,” McCain wrote on social media.
Some of the attacks on Graham had by then turned openly personal.
Rep. Kat Cammack, a Florida Republican, questioned his outsized influence in the White House when asked by a reporter last week whether she believed Graham should “play such a prominent role in conducting the war.”
“I absolutely think his Oval Office access should be revoked,” Cammack replied.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, also a Florida Republican, for her part suggested that if Graham wants to send American children abroad to war, he should begin with himself.
“There are people in the Senate who are in favor of war everywhere. Lindsey Graham is one of them,” Luna wrote on X earlier this month.
“He does not tell the president what to do, nor does he control Congress,” she continued. “Over the past week and more, I have spoken many times with the administration, as well as with other members of Congress, and nothing has changed on the question of a ground presence.”
“No boots on the ground. If Sen. Graham wants to fight in a foreign conflict, he should be the first to volunteer,” she added.
Responding to Luna’s remarks, Graham told The Wall Street Journal: “I have a Bronze Star. I’m not a combat soldier, but I have done my service, and I am proud of what I do.”
Discontent with his interventionist rhetoric has spread well beyond the Republican Party.
In Montana, a Libertarian Senate candidate regarded as a long-shot in the race pledged that, if elected, he would introduce legislation to draft Graham into the military.
“I am running for the U.S. Senate. If I am elected, the first bill I introduce will be one to conscript Lindsey Graham into any conflict he publicly supports while in office,” read a post by Tom Gendron, a retired member of the Montana National Guard and an Afghanistan veteran.
Rep. Gil Cisneros, a California Democrat and U.S. Navy veteran, said Graham’s compulsion to position himself beside Trump on nearly every issue in Washington has stripped him of any remaining credibility in the eyes of Democrats. In his view, the senator’s hawkish stance on Iran looks less like a matter of principle than yet another display of unconditional loyalty to Mr. Trump.
“I no longer pay attention to what Lindsey Graham says,” Cisneros said. “I don’t know whether it has to do with his own political survival, but he has simply become extremely bellicose in support of Donald Trump and backs him completely—whatever he may want to do, however it may look.”
A substantial share of the criticism from the right has come from younger politicians, reflecting a broader shift within the party that brought Mr. Trump to power on a promise not to start new wars.
A Pew Research Center poll published on Wednesday points in the same direction. A majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the war with Iran. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, that figure stands at 90%. Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 69% approve of the president’s approach.
Within the Republican Party, however, a sharp age divide is evident. Among Republicans under 30, only 49% approve of Trump’s approach to Iran.
Support rises with age. Among Republicans aged 65 and older, 84% back Trump on this issue; among those aged 50 to 64, 79% do; and among Republicans aged 30 to 49, the figure is 60%.
Graham has held hard-line foreign-policy views for virtually his entire career, while also cultivating close ties with foreign leaders. Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that he had advised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on how best to persuade Mr. Trump to authorize military action against Iran.
But after Trump this week imposed a five-day pause in strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure and proposed a 15-point ceasefire plan—swiftly rejected by Iran—Graham signaled that he still backs the president’s course.
“I do not merely support the efforts of @POTUS and his team to negotiate with Iran in search of a solution to the threats this regime poses to the region and the world—I encourage them,” Graham wrote. “I am seeking a result, not any particular method.”
The senator also laid out the military objectives that, in his view, the United States should secure under any future agreement.
“If diplomacy can deliver those objectives, I will not merely support it—I will prefer it, because war is literal hell,” he added.