WASHINGTON D.C (VINnews)-Unreleased documentary footage obtained by The Wall Street Journal shows the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in candid conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan and others around the start of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran.

British filmmaker Alex Holder, who was granted extensive access to Graham beginning in 2023, recorded hundreds of hours of material for a project tentatively titled “Lindsey’s Game.” Graham died earlier this month at age 71 from an aortic dissection. Holder said he hopes to release the documentary in the coming months.

The footage includes a March 4 call in which Netanyahu, speaking on speakerphone, urged Graham against pressing the United States to join Israeli operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon while the Iran campaign was underway. “We’re concentrating right now on Iran,” Netanyahu said, according to the Journal’s account of the recording. “If we tell Hezbollah that we’re going all the way, we threaten them, but if we actually do it, then they have no reason not to go all the way against us. And right now that’s not our interest.”

Graham replied that the advice was “actually good counsel.”

Separate clips show Graham speaking with Sullivan in March about the challenges of Middle East negotiations under the Trump administration and offering an optimistic — and ultimately incorrect — timeline for the Iran conflict. Graham told Sullivan the Iranian regime would begin losing control of cities within three to four weeks and that momentum would become “almost irreversible.”

At the outset of U.S. strikes on Iran in February, Graham is seen reacting emotionally on camera. “Look what we’ve done here. I almost cried,” he told the film crew. He added that he had spoken with President Trump that morning and that the president was “jacked,” saying it was “the best thing I have ever done” and that “he loves blowing stuff up.”

Graham, long known as one of the Senate’s most vocal Iran hawks, is also shown traveling to meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, consulting military commanders, speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and expressing frustration in later months that the war was not progressing as he had hoped. In a June interview filmed weeks before his death, Graham voiced concern that Trump was “letting this thing slip away” after signing a preliminary deal with Iran.

Holder said Graham viewed the access he enjoyed with world leaders as extraordinary and repeatedly described the enterprise as “a game.” The senator allowed the crew to film sensitive meetings and phone calls; some participants later told the Journal they were unaware the conversations were being recorded.

The Israeli government did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the footage. A White House official, responding to Graham’s remarks about Trump’s envoys, described Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff as “excellent dealmakers.”

The material provides a rare, unfiltered window into Graham’s central role in advocating for military action against Iran and his close relationships with both Trump and Netanyahu during a conflict that remains ongoing.