Inside Lindsey Graham's final push for Saudi-Israel peace

Axios reports that Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who died suddenly on Saturday, spent his final weeks laying the groundwork for an ambitious push to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. In conversations with reporter Barak Ravid, Graham described plans to begin intensive diplomacy after Israel's October elections and the U.S. midterms, coordinating with President Trump and envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. He saw a Saudi-Israel deal as the defining prize of a broader postwar settlement in the Middle East, though Saudi insistence on a path to a Palestinian state clashed with Netanyahu's far-right government. Axios says that in his final hours, after briefing Trump by phone Saturday night, Graham joked that he couldn't die yet because he still had the Russia sanctions bill, Iran, and Israeli-Saudi normalization left to finish. He passed away several hours later.

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