Sens. Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal, while disagreeing on calls for a humanitarian pause in the hostilities between Israel and Hamas, said Sunday they plan to introduce a bipartisan resolution to warn Iran about an expansion of the war through Hezbollah's fighters.
"It basically says that if the war expands, if Hezbollah opens up a second front against Israel in a substantial way to overwhelm the Iron Dome, then we should hit the Islamic Republican of Iran," Graham, R-S.C., said on CNN's "State of the Union."
"There is no Hamas without the ayatollah's support," he added. "There is no Hezbollah without the ayatollah's support. The great Satan in the region is not Israel or the United States. It's Iran."
Graham said he has just returned from a trip to Israel with Blumenthal, D-Conn., where Israel was "begging us to deter Iran."
"They don't want the war to widen," said Graham. "If any of our troops are killed by Iranian-backed militias, and that's the expansion of the war."
The resolution, he added, will put Iran on notice that all of the United States military forces in the region will be coming after it if it expands the war by activating Hezbollah and killing an American through proxies in Syria and Iraq.
"They need to hear that and they need to believe that," Graham said.
Blumenthal agreed that the plan is aggressive, but it's necessary and it's not only in the interest of Israel.
"The purpose of the resolution is to deter Iran by showing we're going to be behind the president as he seeks to stop the war from widening or escalating," said Blumenthal.
He added that he and Graham visited Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and "they loathe and fear Iran, and Hezbollah and Hamas, and the other proxies as much as Israel [does]."
"They are in favor of deterring a wider war," he said. "I think there's bipartisan common ground here and there's consensus in the region that deterrence is critical. Iran is a toxic, malign influence. It is financially equipping, supplying all of these proxies that have as their goal to disrupt and destabilize the region."
Saudi Arabia and other powers, meanwhile, want to normalize relations with Israel to achieve stability, Blumenthal said.
"There is a strong view, and I agree with it, that the reason why Hamas struck now and why Iran gave them the green light to strike now is because of the talks on normalizing relationships and Saudi Arabia were making progress," he added.
However, that does not mean the senators agree on a pause in the fighting for humanitarian reasons.
"I think Israel is committed to following the law of armed conflict," said Graham. "One thing I want to say for sure is Israel is not engaged in genocide."
He also called for an end to the "whitewashing" of the status of the people in Gaza.
"I'm sure there are plenty of people that would love to be free from Hamas," said Graham. "The most radicalized people on the planet live in the Gaza Strip. They've been taught since birth to kill and hate the Jews."
He said he does not want to take military pressure off Hamas, even though he would like to see Israel find a way to help the humanitarian situation.
"But after World War II, did anybody ask us these questions?" Graham said. "The United States dropped two atomic bombs on cities in Japan to end the war. I think this is total war between Israel and Hamas. I want to protect innocent people as much as possible, but I want the world to realize that the radicalized population in Gaza has been going on for over a decade. This will not be easy."
Blumenthal, though, said he thinks there should be a humanitarian pause not only for supplies but to enable the release of hostages taken by Hamas and to move civilians from the combat zone of north Gaza away from the fighting.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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