SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly sharply criticized Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham for what she described as reckless saber-rattling toward Iran during a Wednesday appearance on The Tucker Carlson Show.
According to the Daily Caller, Kellys rebuke came after Graham used Fox News Hannity to issue a stark warning to Irans ruling clerics, declaring that President Donald Trump would kill the ayatollahs if they continued to slaughter Iranian protesters. Graham, a longtime foreign policy hawk, framed his comments as a show of solidarity with demonstrators in Iran, but Kelly argued that his rhetoric risked dragging the United States into yet another Middle Eastern conflict.
What Lindsey Graham stands for is deeply disturbing to me. And that stuff about the ayatollah, our president is going to come kill you would you just stop? hey, as far as I know, Lindsey Graham doesnt have teenaged children who are going to have to go fight his war he now wants against Iran, Kelly said. But I do. And you have kids in their 20s. And some of us actually have a real stake in making sure that does not happen. We do not want that.
Graham, appearing on Hannity, went further by openly calling for regime change in Tehran and casting the Islamic Republics leadership in explicitly ideological terms. To the people of Iran, we stand with you tonight, he said. We stand for you taking back your country from the ayatollah, a religious Nazi who kills you and terrorizes the world.
Change is coming to Iran, itll be the biggest change in the history of the [Middle] East to get rid of this Nazi regime, Graham added. To the people of Iran, help is on the way. His remarks underscored his long-standing interventionist posture, one that often puts him at odds with conservatives who favor restraint abroad and insist that American blood and treasure not be spent on open-ended foreign entanglements.
Graham even appeared on Fox News Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy wearing a Make Iran Great Again hat while pressing for deeper U.S. involvement, a move likely intended to echo President Trumps America First branding while in practice urging a far more activist foreign policy. His stance comes as Iran faces its largest wave of unrest since 2022, with at least 36 people killed and more than 2,000 detained as protests have spread to at least 113 locations across 22 of Irans 31 provinces, according to Fox News and the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.
The demonstrations, driven by economic collapse and the free fall of Irans rial, have also become a direct challenge to the countrys Islamic theocracy, raising the stakes for both the regime and the West. President Trump, signaling support for the protesters while maintaining a posture of deterrence rather than automatic intervention, warned on Truth Social, If Iran shots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.
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