WASHINGTON (The Thursday Times) — Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and one of President Donald Trump’s closest allies in Congress, died on the evening of Saturday 11 July 2026 aged 71, from what his office described as a “brief and sudden illness.” His office announced the death in a statement posted on X, saying his family “appreciates prayers at this time and asks for privacy during this incredibly difficult period.” Graham had returned from Kyiv only days earlier, where he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday, and had been scheduled to appear on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.
NBC News reported that emergency services responded to a cardiac arrest call at Graham’s Capitol Hill home on Saturday night, citing police scanner audio, and that photographs from the scene showed paramedics carrying a person on a stretcher to an ambulance. A senior staffer told NBC News there was no indication the senator had been feeling unwell before his death. His office provided no further medical detail.
President Trump led the tributes in a post on Truth Social early Sunday. “Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known, is dead!” Trump wrote. “He was always working, and was a true American Patriot. Lindsey will be greatly missed!!! DETAILS AND ARRANGEMENTS TO FOLLOW. So sad!” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said his “heart is heavy this morning to learn the passing of my friend and colleague.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had “lost one of its greatest friends,” calling Graham “a great friend of Israel and a cherished friend of mine.”
Graham was first elected to the US Senate in 2002, winning the South Carolina seat previously held by Strom Thurmond, and was re-elected four times. He served as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and had previously chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee. Before entering Congress he served in the US Air Force and later the Air Force Reserves, retiring as a colonel after 33 years in uniform. Across three decades in Washington he built a reputation as one of the chamber’s most outspoken foreign-policy hawks, forming with the late John McCain and former senator Joe Lieberman a hawkish trio once dubbed the “Three Amigos.”
Graham was among the most hawkish voices in the Senate on Iran. Three weeks ago, speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation, he warned that if diplomacy with Tehran failed, “President Trump is going to take the Strait of Hormuz. We’re going to run it.” He had also come out against the initial contours of the US-Iran memorandum of understanding, the agreement reached with Pakistani mediation and now widely known as the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding. The Thursday Times has covered the deal and its terms in detail.
His death removes one of the Senate’s most influential foreign-policy hawks at a moment when the US-Iran framework is being finalised. Graham had, according to NPR, announced an agreement with the Trump administration on Friday to move forward with a package of Russia sanctions, and had spent recent months pressing for a hawkish line on both Iran and Russia. His absence leaves a significant gap among the Republican foreign-policy voices who have shaped the party’s approach to the Middle East and to the war in Ukraine.
