Lindsey Graham isn't even in the ground yet and his funeral has already become the hottest diplomatic backroom in the world. Benjamin Netanyahu and Volodymyr Zelenskyy are both flying into Washington on Tuesday, at the same time, to attend the late senator's service and, far more urgently, to get five minutes alone with Donald Trump. Two wartime leaders. One grieving president. Zero certainty about what the United States actually wants to do about either of their wars.
The Funeral as Foreign Policy Summit
Graham died suddenly on July 11th. He was a hawkish ally of Israel, a fierce critic of Iran, and had met Zelenskyy in Kyiv the day before his death while pushing a Senate bill to tighten sanctions on Russia. So yes, the man's memorial service has drawn two sitting heads of government who are both, in very different ways, fighting for their political and literal survival.
According to The Guardian, both Netanyahu and Zelenskyy are scheduled to meet Trump separately during the Washington visit. These won't be casual condolence conversations. These are emergency diplomatic sessions dressed up in funeral black. The timing is not coincidental. Both men are showing up at the exact moment that US policy toward their respective wars is, as The Guardian puts it, in a state of flux. That's a polite way of saying nobody on earth knows what Trump is going to do next.
Trump and Netanyahu: The Bromance That Curdled
This will be the first face-to-face between Trump and Netanyahu since February, when they were, according to The Guardian, in lockstep preparing for the strikes against Iran that launched on February 28th. That was then. Since February, the war has ground on inconclusively, and Trump has publicly called Netanyahu "crazy" and announced, with the humility we've come to expect, "Without me, there would be no Israel."
The specific list of grievances is stacking up. Trump signed a memorandum of understanding last month for a 60-day ceasefire with Iran, and Netanyahu reportedly wasn't consulted on the deal. Then Trump publicly blew up that same agreement after Iran kept attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The US spent 13 consecutive nights striking Iranian targets before pausing again amid reports, cited by The Guardian via Axios, that Admiral Brad Cooper, head of US Central Command, recommended stopping the bombing because US missile stocks are running low and the campaign had hit the limits of its effectiveness.
And if that weren't enough, Netanyahu is also reportedly unhappy about a deal the US announced last week with Saudi Arabia allowing for a Saudi civil nuclear program. So Netanyahu is flying to a funeral carrying a list of grievances longer than most people's to-do lists, hoping to iron things out with a man who just called him crazy.
Zelenskyy's Surprisingly Better Hand
Zelenskyy's position, remarkably, appears to be improving. The Guardian reports signs of a dramatic shift in Trump administration posture toward Ukraine, with the White House looking more sympathetic to Kyiv's position than at any point since Trump returned to power. That is a very low bar, but clearing it still counts.
The clearest signal of a thaw came from the least expected source. Laura Loomer, the far-right social media influencer and reliable indicator of what Trump's base is thinking, traveled to Kyiv last week, met Zelenskyy, and publicly walked back her previous support for Russia. When Laura Loomer is recanting her pro-Putin stance, something has genuinely shifted. Trump and Zelenskyy also had what The Guardian describes as a cordial meeting at this month's NATO summit in Ankara, which is a meaningful contrast to last year's White House confrontation where Trump told Zelenskyy on live television, "You don't have the cards."
Zelenskyy has also been playing offense heading into this visit. He posted over the weekend that he had instructed Ukrainian intelligence to share information with the US about Russia's support for Iran, including evidence that Russia had been using satellite surveillance to monitor US military facilities in the Gulf. That's not a subtle move. That's Zelenskyy handing Trump a gift-wrapped reason to see Russia and Iran as a joint threat, and to see Ukraine as the ally with receipts.
The Iran Situation Is Genuinely Unhinged
Step back and look at what The Guardian is actually describing with the Iran war, and it becomes clear that US policy here has been a disaster of improvisation. Trump went in openly supportive of toppling the Tehran regime. Then he signed a ceasefire memo that Iran ignored. Then he blew up the ceasefire. Then US forces struck Iranian targets for nearly two straight weeks. Then the Pentagon said the bombing had hit the limits of effectiveness because they were running out of missiles. Now there are reports of resumed negotiations.
This is not a strategy. This is a vending machine that keeps jamming. And Netanyahu, who has spent years engineering the conditions for exactly this confrontation with Iran, is now flying to Washington because the American president who launched the war has started calling him crazy and cutting deals without telling him. The ceasefire memo that excluded Israel, the Saudi nuclear deal that alarms Israel, the public insults from Trump. Netanyahu needs this meeting badly, and he knows it.
Graham's Ghost Is Doing a Lot of Work Here
It is worth pausing on what Lindsey Graham was actually doing in the days before he died. He met Zelenskyy in Kyiv. He was pushing sanctions on Russia. He was one of the most consistent hawkish voices in the Senate on both Israel and Ukraine. The Guardian reports that he was a close ally of both Netanyahu and Zelenskyy.
His death on July 11th created the gravitational pull that is now drawing these two wartime leaders to the same city on the same day. A funeral is the perfect cover for meetings that might otherwise look too urgent, too transactional, too visibly desperate. Nobody questions why a head of state flies to Washington to honor a friend. And nobody can stop them from requesting twenty minutes with the president while they're there.
The Dingo Take
Here is what Tuesday's funeral actually is: it's a diplomatic emergency wrapped in a eulogy. Two countries at war, two leaders whose fates are at least partially in Donald Trump's hands, and a president who has called one of them crazy and spent the last five months demolishing every consistent position he held on both conflicts. Lindsey Graham would have understood exactly what was happening. He spent his career turning funerals, summits, and photo ops into leverage. The men attending his service learned from the best.
The deeper story here is how completely Trump has scrambled both of these wars. The Iran conflict is being run like someone is making it up daily, which appears to be accurate. The Ukraine war is shifting because a far-right influencer had a change of heart and missile stockpiles are a concern, not because of any coherent policy shift. Netanyahu is flying in carrying unaddressed grievances from an ally who publicly humiliates him. Zelenskyy is flying in with intelligence files to trade like baseball cards. This is American foreign policy in 2026.
Lindsey Graham was many things, and this publication would not have agreed with him on most of them. But he believed in something consistent, even when it was wrong. He would look at the current state of US policy toward both Israel and Ukraine and recognize it for what it is: nobody steering, everyone grabbing at the wheel. The least surprising thing about this week is that the most consequential diplomatic meetings are happening at a funeral. Where else would you go to bury something that's already dead?
