Lindsey Graham is gone. His Middle East plan doesn’t have to die with him
Washington Examiner · RC · trust 32/100
Sen. Lindsey Graham spent his last weeks building a concrete plan for the Israeli-Saudi normalization. He spoke regularly with President Donald Trump and several senior American, Israeli , and Saudi officials about this diplomatic endeavor.
Graham planned to visit Israel and Saudi Arabia in August, then begin formal negotiations after Israel’s October election and the U.S. midterm elections in November. He believed that any agreement needed a meaningful Palestinian component to secure sufficient Democratic Senate support for the approval of a possible U.S.-Saudi defense treaty. For Graham, the period after the confrontation with Iran offered a rare strategic opening that Washington could not afford to waste.
Now that he is in heaven , the Trump administration must still honor the spirit of his vision for the Middle East.
The first step is to decapitate the Iranian regime’s remaining leadership and complete its removal from power. Recent U.S. and Israeli strikes have already shattered key command nodes, missile production, and air defenses. Iranian forces have responded by blackmailing the Strait of Hormuz multiple times and launching over a dozen attacks on commercial shipping.
Traffic through the strait collapsed from roughly 129 vessels per day to as few as 3 to 6 during peak periods of disruption. Tehran’s shadow fleet of more than 1,140 tankers — over 18% of the global oil tanker fleet — still moves hundreds of millions of barrels to fund the regime and its proxies. Therefore, eliminating surviving senior leaders, seizing Kharg and Qeshm, impairing South Pars, mobilizing internal opposition groups, and blocking Hormuz will create the conditions for the Iranian people to take over the streets and make the Mullahs’ regime collapse.
With Iran permanently weakened, the Saudi-Israeli normalization becomes possible. Jerusalem can offer limited Palestinian concessions, economic access and security coordination without sovereignty, while preserving every security red line. That bargain could secure Saudi recognition and the Senate’s approval of a U.S.-Saudi defense treaty.
In parallel, the United States must convert the Abraham Accords into three operational security frameworks that turn diplomatic recognition into integrated deterrence with teeth.
In the Western Hemisphere, stand up a Hemisphere Narco-Terror Elimination Network linking Israel with Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Paraguay. Hezbollah’s Tri-Border networks generate an estimated $300-$400 million annually through cocaine trafficking and money laundering that directly finances rockets and tunnels. This framework gives Israel and partner forces joint special operations authority, real-time crypto and hawala tracking cells, and pre-authorized cross-border raid protocols to dismantle Hezbollah’s infrastructure and its alliances with local criminal and leftist terrorist networks.
In Northern Africa and the Gulf, create an Abrahamic Security Alliance uniting Israel, Bahrain, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Integrated Israeli Arrow systems — alongside Gulf air defenses — under a combined maritime command, equipped with forward-deployed American sensors and strike assets, will shield Hormuz from Iran’s harassment. The alliance would integrate a kill-chain architecture and automatic response triggers that will neutralize Iranian drone and missile launch preparations before they reach shipping lanes.
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In the Indo-Pacific, launch an Indo-Pacific Shadow Fleet Strangulation Coalition with Israel, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines. The Jewish state’s satellite and AI maritime-awareness tools will drive persistent surveillance and interdiction operations against Iranian shadow-fleet transfers in Singapore and Malaysia. The coalition will also systematically impair tankers that sustain Tehran’s revenue while hardening partners against the Chinese-Iranian coordination near the Taiwan Strait.
Graham made normalization the postwar prize. However, Washington must depose the Mullahs, achieve Israeli-Saudi normalization, and transform the Abraham Accords into Abrahamic-strike alliances, delivering on Graham’s vision for the Middle East .
Jose Lev Alvarez is an American–Israeli scholar specializing in international security policy. A multilingual veteran of the IDF special forces and the U.S. Army, he holds three master’s degrees and is completing a Ph.D. in Intelligence and Global Security in the Washington, D.C., area.
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