Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is at it again — this time turning a Middle East military scenario into a full-blown reality show for war hawks. But his latest performance, invoking Iwo Jima while hyping an Iran escalation, has even some Republicans calling foul.
The South Carolina senator, ahead of President Donald Trump’s looming ultimatum over the Strait of Hormuz, seemed to be practically drooling over sending more Americans into harm’s way. But his reference to World War II’s bloody Iwo Jima battle — “over 26,000 American casualties” — drew sharp condemnation from fellow conservatives, who accused Graham of treating U.S. troops like “expendable cattle.”
The controversy ignited during a tense Fox News Sunday segment with Shannon Bream, who pressed Graham on a warning from The Atlantic. Brynn Tannehill’s piece laid it out plainly: any U.S. seizure of Kharg Island could spiral into a prolonged fight, with troops facing ballistic missiles, drone strikes, and logistical nightmares. The scenario? More akin to Ukraine than the shock-and-awe style campaigns Americans are used to.
Graham, unsurprisingly, brushed off the caution. “I’m sort of tired of all this armchair quarterbacking. This has been an amazing military operation. God bless the fallen,” he said. And when Bream stressed the human cost? He doubled down: “I trust the Marines, not that guy. We’ve got two Marine expeditionary units sailing to this island. We did Iwo Jima; we can do this. The Marines, my money’s always on the Marines.”
It was that Iwo Jima line that set off a firestorm. Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna tweeted, “I am deeply upset at the lack of respect for life Senator Lindsey Graham is displaying when talking about our troops. He is acting as if they are expendable cattle. This is unacceptable and dark. There were over 26,000 American casualties at Iwo Jima.”
The criticism didn’t stop there. South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, Graham’s potential gubernatorial rival, slammed him on X as a reckless careerist. “Lindsey Graham needs to be removed from the Situation Room. I don’t want to hear one word from a guy with no kids, desperately sending our sons and daughters into war on the ground in Iran,” she wrote. She doubled down: “Lindsey Graham has one foreign policy: send someone else’s kids to war. He was wrong about Iraq. He was wrong about Afghanistan. Now he’s wrong about Iran.”
Even Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett weighed in, fact-checking Graham’s Iwo Jima reference with hard numbers: “We lost 7,000 Marines and 20,000 were wounded.”
Graham’s justification? He framed the Iran escalation as a step toward peace in the region, citing the Hamas terror attack on Israel and his ambition to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel — but his hawkish theatrics and cavalier references to historic U.S. bloodshed left many questioning whether he truly grasps the human stakes.
Meanwhile, conservative commentators piled on. Matt Walsh called Graham’s Iwo Jima invocation “extremely troubling,” noting the staggering cost of American lives in previous conflicts while Graham pushes for another ground war in the Middle East.
