South Carolina Republican Senator and well-known hawk Lindsey Graham is salivating over the prospect of war with Iran at a moment regional tensions are boiling in the wake of Israel assassinating Hamas' political leader in Tehran and Hezbollah's senior military commander in Beirut.
Graham on Wednesday introduced a bill that if passed would authorize military action against Iran if Hezbollah attacks Israel. The resolution says that the Senate "asserts that efforts to deter Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran are most credible when the President keeps all options on the table, including military force."
It would consider an all-out assault by Hezbollah to have the direct backing of Iran, and would thus authorize direct US counterattack on the Islamic Republic.
The bill further authorizes military action against Iran if the country is deemed on the cusp of achieving a nuclear bomb. Iranian officials have lately signaled a major boost in its nuclear program at key sites. Though Iran's leaders have yet to change the country's official nuclear doctrine of seeing the bomb as 'unIslamic' (while long claiming the program is only for peaceful nuclear energy purposes), Tehran's rhetoric has shifted of late to issuing warnings that it could produce a nuke if it wanted to.
The resolution further underscores that Iran and Hezbollah shall be held responsible for "any adverse impacts on the people of Lebanon that result from an attack on the State of Israel by Hezbollah" while also urging the US governemnt to use "all diplomatic tools and power projection capabilities" to punish Israel's fiercest regional enemies.
As for the nuclear aspect, Graham has sought to invoke an Authorization for Use of Military Force which would greenlight a Washington military response if Iran's nuke program is developed to the point of becoming a direct national security threat to the United States.
"Iran will keep going until somebody tells them to stop," Graham said in a press briefing this week. "It is time to put red lines on their nuclear program."
He asserted that it is "a certainty" that if the US doesn't quickly get tougher on Iran, it will only be a matter of weeks or months more the country achieves nuclear weapons status. "Their ability to enrich to weapons grade is now a matter of weeks, not months," Graham said. "Their ability to weaponize the material has advanced, and it is now time for Congress to lend their voice to the proper response."
"If Hezbollah attacks Israel, my hope is that they will have one less refinery than they do today," he continued. "It is time to hit the Ayatollah in the pocketbook. Oil refineries are the lifeblood of his regime. Without those refineries, they would not be able to fund terrorism."
Revealingly, nothing of what Graham said urged immediate and robust peace or diplomatic efforts in the region. Congressional hawks and neocons have long had Iran in their crosshairs, in a policy effort that goes back to at least the 1990s.