Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is set to introduce a resolution affirming that the only acceptable outcome of U.S. nuclear talks with Iran would be the total dismantlement of its enrichment program, Jewish Insider has learned. Graham says he hopes to introduce the legislation on Thursday. 

Graham first unveiled the resolution last month alongside Sens. Katie Britt (R-AL) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) in response to President Donald Trump’s nuclear negotiations with Tehran. Many Republicans on Capitol Hill have grown wary that the Trump administration could agree to a deal with terms akin to former President Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear agreement, though Graham has expressed confidence that Trump would not allow for any enrichment, citing recent private conversations with the president.

The original text of the resolution commends the Trump administration for engaging directly with the Iranians while calling out the regime’s “decades of cheating,” its “barbaric nature, and its open commitment to destroying the State of Israel,” all of which Graham says must be addressed in a deal. It affirms his support for the “complete dismantlement and destruction of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s entire nuclear program.”

The resolution also backs a subsequent agreement for peaceful nuclear cooperation, also known as a “123 Agreement,” requiring Tehran to adopt the International Atomic Energy Agency’s protocols for verification of nuclear safeguards and “forgo domestic uranium enrichment, the reprocessing of spent fuel, and the development or possession of any enrichment or reprocessing infrastructure or capacity.”

Speaking to JI on Tuesday, Graham said he has been engaging with the White House and Israeli leadership to ensure that all parties approve of the resolution’s language. The South Carolina senator said that he is in the process of making alterations to the resolution at the request of both sides.

“We’re working with the White House, they want some changes. I sent it to Israel, they want some changes,” Graham said. 

He says he hopes the resolution will receive a floor vote by next week, though he did not say if or when he plans to try to force floor consideration on it. 

“It’d be the most destabilizing thing in the world, I believe, if Iran ever acquired a nuclear weapon capability. I think the Sunni Arab world would want to go down that road also. You’d have a nuclear arms race in the Mideast, but more importantly to me, I think they would use it. I think if Iran had a nuclear weapon, they would use it as part of their radical religious regime,” Graham said at a press conference on his resolution last month. 

“The Ayatollah and his henchmen are virtual religious Nazis. They openly talk about destroying the State of Israel. They write it on the side of their missiles. And I believe them. I believe that they want to purify Islam, take over the holy sites in Saudi Arabia, wipe out the Jewish state and drive us out of the Mideast. And a nuclear weapon is part of that agenda. It’s not an insurance policy for regime survivability. It is a weapon to carry out one of the most extreme, religious ideas on the planet,” he continued.