Graham invokes Iwo Jima in call for Trump to ‘take Kharg Island’

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called for the Marines to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export hub, which lies about 20 miles off the coast of the mainland, declaring on Fox News: “We did Iowa Jima, we can do this.”

“Here’s what I tell President Trump: Keep it up for few more weeks, take Kharg Island where all of the resources they have to produce oil, control that island, let this regime die on a vine,” Graham told Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.”

Asked about an analysis by The Atlantic magazine that an invasion of Kharg could become a “grinding war of attrition,” Graham said: “I’m sort of tired of all this arm chair quarterbacking.”

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

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Nearly 7,000 U.S. service members died in the Battle for Iwo Jima, one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific theater in World War II and a key conflict in the U.S. military’s island-hopping strategy to put U.S. bombers within range of the Japanese homeland.

Graham’s invocation of Iwo Jima in his call for the Marines to seize Kharg prompted a strong response from Republican Rep. Nancy Mace (S.C.), who argued that Graham has been wrong about conflicts in the past.

“Graham has one foreign policy: send someone else’s kids to war,” she posted on the social media site X. “He was wrong about Iraq. He was wrong about Afghanistan. Now he’s wrong about Iran.”

Mace was the first female cadet to graduate from The Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, while Graham served as a U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General (JAG) for more than three decades and retired as a colonel.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), an Air Force veteran, said on social media that she was “deeply upset” by Graham’s comments.  

“I am deeply upset at the lack of respect for life Sen. 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 Iowa Jima,” she wrote on X.

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