US Senator Lindsey Graham has filed to run for a fifth term in South Carolina while defending the US-Israel war on Iran and his role in advocating confrontation with Tehran.
Speaking to supporters at his campaign office on Monday, the Republican senator said he had spoken with President Donald Trump on Sunday night and again Monday morning.
"We haven't underestimated Iran at all," Graham said. "We're crushing them."
Graham has advocated direct confrontation between Washington and Tehran for more than a decade.
He rejected the Iran nuclear deal negotiated under former President Barack Obama and supported Trump's decision to strike nuclear sites last year.
"If the radical cleric in Iran had a nuclear weapon, he would use it just as certainly as Hitler were to use it. He would kill all the Jews, and we’re next," Graham said.
"I'll put my efforts to make sure the military has what they need to win the wars we're in, ahead of anybody in the United States Senate."
Iran has long been central to Graham's foreign policy stance.
A leading hawk on Iran
As a member of the US House of Representatives in the 1990s, he backed policies aimed at isolating Iran and limiting its missile and nuclear programmes.
After being elected to the Senate in 2002, he frequently warned that Iran was using the Iraq war to expand its regional influence.
During remarks in 2015 at the US Council on Foreign Relations, Graham said he wanted the US military to "stop them and make them pay a price so they'll never want to do it again."
"Let's make sure that their air force, their navy and their army is a shell of its former self," he said.
Graham's aggressive foreign policy positions have sometimes appeared at odds with Trump's "America First" agenda.
However, the two have developed a close relationship in recent years.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump regularly hears from lawmakers and has a "very good and candid" rapport with Graham.
"Republicans are supportive of President Trump's bold decision to launch combat operations and end the threat posed by the Iranian terrorist regime," she said.
