‘We Did Iwo Jima, We Can Do This!’ Lindsey Graham Calls on Trump to ‘Take Kharg Island’

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a longtime hawk on Iran, told Fox News’s Shannon Bream Sunday that the U.S. should seize control of Kharg Island, which has been described as “the point of departure for approximately 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports.”

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump bragged about obliterating “every military target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island.”

Trump’s Truth Social post continued, saying, “for reasons of decency, I have chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island. However, should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision.”

On Sunday, as the Strait of Hormuz remained essentially shut down due to Iran’s strikes on oil tankers, Trump threatened the Islamic State: Open the Strait or face U.S. strikes on the nation’s power plants.

Graham said he told Trump that to permanently incapacitate Iran, he needed to “take Kharg Island, where they have all of the resources they have to produce oil.”

Bream asked if Graham’s plan would involve U.S. troops on the ground, citing an article in The Atlantic warning of a “grinding war of attrition” because troops would be far away from necessary resupply.

“I’m sort of tired of all this arm chair quarterbacking,” Graham said. “This has been an amazing military operation. God bless the fallen.”

“But, it’s a difference when we talk about troops on the ground,” Bream pushed back.

“I trust the Marines, not that guy,” Graham said of The Atlantic writer. “I trust DOD. We’ve got two marine expeditionary area units sailing to this island. We did Iwo Jima, we can do this. The Marines, my money’s always on the Marines.”

“I don’t know if you take the island or you blockade the island, but I know this: The day we control that island, this regime, this terrorist regime, has been weakened and it will die on a vine,” Graham said, adding, “I want to take up and complete what [Joe] Biden started. As soon as we get Iran defanged so they can never do another October 7th, I want to start up peace talks between Saudi and Israel. This year, I want a peace deal between Saudi and Israeli normalizing ending the Arab-Israeli conflict — been going on for 2,000 years this year — and you can’t do it with a lethal Iran.”

Watch the clip above via Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream.

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