US Senator Lindsey Graham was reportedly working on a new initiative to broker a historic normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia in the weeks before his death over the weekend.

Graham, a veteran Republican Israel-backer, had worked on achieving Saudi-Israel normalization for years, including during the Biden administration, and believed that the US-Israeli campaign against Iran had created an opening for US President Donald Trump to broker such an agreement, Axios reported on Sunday, citing conversations between Graham and Axios reporter Barak Ravid.

The senator reportedly sought to begin an intensive diplomatic push after Israel’s late-October election and the US midterm elections, with the aim of reaching an agreement before the new US Congress is set to be sworn in in January.

Graham had recently urged Trump to authorize a short, overwhelming military operation to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if diplomacy failed to resolve the crisis there before the initiative got underway, the report added.

In mid-May, Graham began discussing the idea with Trump, telling him it should be the focus on the “day after” the Iran war, the report said.

Trump’s reported push during a May conference call for the leaders of several Arab and Muslim countries to establish relations with Israel, if an agreement with Iran was reached, came a week after that conversation, according to Axios.

In recent weeks, Graham had discussed the initiative with senior Trump advisers such as Jared Kushner, as well as with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s confidant Ron Dermer, Saudi Ambassador to Washington Reema bint Bandar Al Saud, and Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan, the report continued, adding that he had planned to visit both Israel........

© The Times of Israel