U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham was preparing a new push for Saudi-Israeli peace for later this year, when he shockingly passed away on Saturday due to a heart issue, according to the news outlet Axios.
Graham’s office said Monday that the vocal supporter of Israel died from an “aortic dissection due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.”
His sudden death had shocked and saddenedIsraeli leaders, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to fly to the U.S. to attend his funeral.
Graham was not just a true friend to Israel but cultivated deep ties with the other U.S. allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia. According to Axios reporter Barak Ravid, Graham told him several times in recent weeks that he planned to launch a new push for normalization between the two most important American allies in the region.
Normalization had seemed imminent several times in 2023, and documents found in Gaza indicate that the threat of an agreement was among Hamas' primary motivations for launching its Oct. 7 invasion in an effort to derail it.
Ravid quoted an unnamed person who spoke with Graham after his return from a trip to Ukraine on Saturday, who said “the senator complained that he was feeling unwell. When the person urged him to seek medical attention immediately, Graham said he would do so Sunday morning,” after appearing on NBC.
“I can't die now,” Graham joked. “I still need to do the Russia sanctions, get Iran sorted out and do Israeli-Saudi normalization.”
The South Carolina senator had been instrumental in pushing for normalization for the past few years, and reportedly planned to launch a diplomatic campaign after Israel’s elections, scheduled for October, and the swearing-in of a new Congress in January.
Graham saw the weakening of the Iranian regime as an opportunity to reach such an agreement, while also recognizing the need to calm the recent escalation of fire exchange between Washington and Tehran.
The senator had reportedly begun nudging U.S. President Donald Trump to include Saudi-Israel peace as a central component of a post-war arrangement in the region, according to the report. In May, Trump shocked Arab and Muslim leaders by urging them to establish relations with Israel as part of a broader peace agreement with Iran.
Despite the Saudi leadership having shown an apparent readiness to make peace with Israel in recent years, this had appeared to cool since the start of the war in 2023.
Some analysts have also argued that the weakening of the Iranian regime – which has long threatened both Israel and Saudi Arabia – may have reduced the urgency of an alliance, making a normalization agreement less likely
The Iran war has also reportedly strained relations between Washington and Riyadh. When U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to the Gulf last month, he notably visited the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain but not Saudi Arabia. This was interpreted as a calculated snub, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing “people familiar with the kingdom’s thinking.”
A Middle East intelligence official later confirmed tothat relations have substantially soured because of the war, according to The Times of Israel.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), warned recently that “alongside Qatar, Riyadh continues to pursue reconciliation with Iran… it is advancing its own policy of accommodation toward the country that directly attacked it.”
Against this backdrop, Graham consulted with Netanyahu confidant Ron Dermer, Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Princess Reema bint Bandar and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan to gauge support for his initiative. He also plans to travel to Saudi Arabia and Israel in the coming weeks to further assess prospects for advancing normalization.
If there was an opportunity, Graham told Ravid, that “he wanted intensive work to begin in September so the pieces of a deal could be in place by November,” planning to use the “lame-duck” period after the midterms to gain the required two-thirds Senate majority to ratify the U.S.-Saudi defense treaty that would be a centerpiece to Israel-Saudi peace.
