One of Donald Trump’s hawkish allies on the Hill is now publicly urging him to get behind further support for Iran’s protesters as demonstrations have been reported across the country for a second week.
It’s a call that comes as speculation is growing that the U.S. administration under Trump will target other countries following the capture of Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s president, in a U.S. raid early Saturday morning. Maduro appeared in U.S. court in New York on Monday alongside his wife, where they pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges.
Sen. Lindsey Graham appeared on Fox News on Sunday evening after flying back from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and club in Florida on board Air Force One with the president.
Graham told Fox’s Trey Gowdy, a former Republican congressman from Graham’s home state of South Carolina, that he hoped Trump would “Make Iran Great Again”, while donning a cap with the inscription Trump had signed at the White House earlier that day.
“All the people who have been protesting for the Palestinians, where are you today?” Graham said, calling the Ayatollah Khamenei a “religious Nazi” who had “tortured, raped and maimed” his people.
“The people are in open revolt. They’ve chosen not to live this way anymore. And unlike [Barack] Obama, President Trump has not turned his back on the people of Iran.”
The comments echoed an insinuation that Trump should consider military force to support regime change within Iran, something that polls show Americans widely do not support. Amid the conflict between Iran and Israel last year, only 16 percent of Americans said they supported U.S. involvement.
“A weakened Iran – a nation run by religious nazis – is due to President Trump’s efforts to isolate Iran economically and to use military force wisely," Graham wrote on Twitter last week.
Protests in Iran continued for their ninth day on Monday as economic conditions have sparked protests that have grown in fervor as a government crackdown has been initiated by the country’s authoritarian theocratic regime. Food insecurity and soaring inflation have been exacerbated by punishing U.S.-led “snapback” sanctions that went into effect late in 2025, a result of Iran’s alleged violations of the deal meant to constrict its nuclear weapons development.
The South Carolina senator has long been one of the Iranian regime’s greatest critics on Capitol Hill and was vocal about his support, in the past, for U.S. strikes aimed at disabling Iran’s nuclear weapons development.
U.S. forces struck Iranian nuclear sites in 2025. The attack destroyed key facilities used in the end-stage construction of nuclear weapons that represented clear violations of the JCPOA nuclear agreement struck under the Obama administration. The U.S. attack marked the lowest point in U.S.-Iran relations in years.
Amid the growing protests, Trump posted on Truth Social that his administration would protect Iranian civilians if a deadly government response against them were ordered: "If Iran shots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue.”
Sporadic reports including from human rights monitors indicate that security forces have opened fire on protesters in some instances within Iran in recent days. At least 20 people are reported dead, with hundreds more arrested.
The new year began with Trump’s strike on Caracas after weeks of suggestions by the president that operations within Venezuela’s borders were imminent. Now, the future of the country is uncertain as the U.S. administration has declined to say who it recognizes as Venezuela’s legitimate ruler at this time and the president (along with some supporters of his in Congress) have suggested that the U.S. could be forced to take control of the country for weeks, if not longer.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday was unable to say when he thought that elections would be held. Venezuelan officials from Maduro’s government have called for his release.
Trump himself has offered the opposite of a clear picture for the coming days. In a gaggle with reporters on Air Force One, he said that the country’s leading opposition figure Maria Corina Machado could not lead the country, explaining: “She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect [of the people].”
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