Struggling Nepo Senator Darline Graham Mocked for Bonkers Debate Answer About Iran War

Darline Graham weighed in on the same topic she’s already admitted isn’t really “my thing.”

A MAGA senator desperate to hold onto her late brother’s seat has made a bizarre attempt to blame Democrats for Donald Trump’s war on Iran.

“Let’s not forget, again, how the war started,” Darline Graham, 62, who took over the deep red South Carolina seat after her brother Lindsey Graham’s sudden death in July, said during an election debate on Sunday.

“The Democrats let Iran get a nuclear weapon, almost,” Graham, now locked in a midterm battle with Democratic rival Annie Andrews, went on. “They were very close to getting one.”

Senator Lindsey Graham attends a news conference in Washington, D.C. on January 7, 2021.

Graham took over the South Carolina seat after the sudden death of her brother Lindsey in July.

The Democratic Party did not allow Iran to “almost” develop a nuclear weapon. President Barack Obama negotiated a landmark deal with Tehran in 2015 that significantly restricted the Islamist regime’s ability to produce weapons-grade nuclear material.

President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from that arrangement in 2018, saying it was a “horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made. It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.” Tehran had initially remained within the agreement’s limits, but began openly exceeding those restrictions the following year.

US President Donald Trump speaks with members of the press before walking to board Marine One at the White House in Washington, DC, US, October 10, 2026.

Graham’s defense of Trump’s war doesn’t hold water.

Since returning to office, the president has publicly rejected his own intelligence officials’ assessments that Iran has not been building a nuclear weapon. He insisted last June that the country was “very close” to obtaining one, and launched a series of strikes against Iranian facilities just days later.

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Trump claimed those attacks had “obliterated” the country’s nuclear capabilities. He then contradicted U.S. intelligence assessments again in February by claiming that Tehran was rebuilding its nuclear program, as a justification for going to war with the regime.

darline graham

Sen. Graham had already admitted foreign policy isn’t her strong suit.

Sean Rayford/Getty Images

Graham’s defense of the president’s military campaign, which he pledged would last a “few weeks” and is now in its eighth month, sparked instant ridicule online. “That isn’t true and not even close to the reason the war started,” one person wrote on X. “She is just as full of s-–t as her late brother.”

“The lies are so blatant, so constant, and so detached from reality that you wonder what planet these people live on,” another added. “And millions believe every word. This is what Trump’s America has become.”

“A potted plant would be a better representative than her at this point,” a third said.

Several other users pointed to Graham’s comments during an earlier primary debate, when she told Republicans: “National security is not my thing.” But that admission did not stop her from weighing in on Sunday on what she believes are Trump’s war successes so far.

“Iran is the weakest they have been in forty years,” she said. “The value of their currency is at an all-time low. Inflation is through the roof. They are being strangled economically. No one will trade with them.”

Military analysts generally agree that Trump’s campaign has cemented Tehran’s sense of its power over the region and global markets. The regime’s repeated closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping corridor through which about a fifth of global oil supply passes each year, has strengthened its negotiating position and sent shockwaves across the global economy.

The closure has affected gas prices in the U.S., with average prices at $4.36 per gallon and diesel at a record $6.28 per gallon as of Monday, and helped keep inflation persistently high because everything that depends on oil to grow, manufacture, or move now costs more.

Graham’s assertion that “no one will trade” with Iran is also false. China has continued trading at scale with Tehran throughout the conflict, including materials the regime has used in its war effort, as the Wall Street Journal revealed on the same day last month that Trump hosted Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the White House.

The Daily Beast has contacted Graham’s office for comment on this story.

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