Lindsey Graham’s Liquidation and the War of Symbols

Assassination plots, Israel, escalation, and the war of symbols

Alexander Dugin on the death of Senator Lindsey Graham, the possibility of an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Israel’s role, Iranian retaliation, and the decisive importance of symbolic and informational warfare.

Host: The day before yesterday, on July 12, Israel’s Channel 12 — quite a curious numerical coincidence — reported that Iran had allegedly tried to organize an assassination attempt on Donald Trump while he was attending the NATO summit in Ankara. There have already been previous attempts on Trump, as we know. Alexander Gelievich [Dugin], from your point of view, can we trust the information from Israeli intelligence that Iran’s current priority is to eliminate the American president

Alexander Dugin: First of all, I think that after the American president eliminated Iran’s spiritual, political, and military leadership, there is no reason left why the Iranians should leave Trump alive. If one side crosses the line, why shouldn’t the other side do the same? The Iranians have repeatedly threatened to kill Trump, and I believe they could well have tried.

That said, in this particular case, it is highly doubtful that Iranian intelligence and the Iranian state have the tools necessary to carry out such a threat. In principle, if they had killed Trump, it would have been perfectly logical: a pawn for a pawn, a rook for a rook, a queen for a queen. The whole world would simply have nodded: clear, understood. After what the Americans and Israelis did to Iran, Iran now has every right to do anything it wants to the Americans — including their top officials. They themselves erased those red lines. So I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest.

However, when it comes to actual capabilities (not desire, but real capabilities), I would be much more cautious. It seems to me that Iran simply does not have the means to pull this off — neither in Ankara, nor on U.S. soil, nor anywhere else. Therefore, I consider it highly unlikely.

But let’s look at the situation more objectively. Trump undoubtedly takes a more moderate position on the Iranian conflict. For all the radicalism, aggressiveness, and bloody nature of U.S. policy in this war, Trump and the United States are acting somewhat more restrained than Israel. There has been a lot of talk about this over the past week: that relations between Trump and Netanyahu have soured, that U.S.-Israeli relations are visibly deteriorating.

And here Trump does something rather reckless, in my opinion: he publicly announces that, facing the threat of elimination by the Iranians, he is leaving formal instructions for the U.S. leadership — that if anything happens to him, there is an order to bomb Iran into oblivion, to raze it to the ground, and bomb it back to the Stone Age. He is repeating word for word what Hillary Clinton once said about Libya and Gaddafi. It feels like they share the same speechwriter — whether Democrats, Clinton, or Trump: the same images, the same formulas. Trump used to mock and express outrage at Clinton’s words, and now he is repeating them verbatim.

But here’s why this move is reckless. Imagine: relations between Israel and Trump are worsening, while Israel needs to continue the war with Iran at all costs, since it was the main initiator. And suddenly Trump says that if the Iranians kill him, he has ordered Iran’s complete destruction. The most obvious thought for Israeli leadership would be: why not eliminate Trump ourselves?

He’s an old man with little time left. His closest circle is already dying off — like the terrorist and extremist Lindsey Graham, who yesterday went straight to hell, and good riddance, or Mitch McConnell, who is barely hanging on. Both were staunch supporters of Israel and opponents of Russia. Soon Trump himself… That whole generation of hawks is physically dying off before our eyes. He also doesn’t have long until the midterm elections, which he will clearly lose. Israel’s position will only get worse.

Against this backdrop, eliminating Trump and pinning it on the Iranians would actually be a very smart move for Israel. Because Israel would immediately solve at least some of Netanyahu’s problems: Trump would be gone, but his letter — his will — would remain and be put into action. A massive operation to destroy Iran would begin, and that is exactly what Israel wants.

And now Israel is claiming that the Iranians tried to assassinate Trump in Ankara. They are planting the narrative and creating a symbolic situation in which everyone is talking and writing about how the Iranians are after Trump, meaning they can do it and have real capabilities. In reality, the Iranians have no such capabilities — but Mossad certainly does. We can see that Israel essentially controls American politics and can manipulate even the president — perhaps not 100%, but 95%.

This is where a real danger emerges, because Trump recklessly revealed the existence of this document. I think that if Israeli intelligence obtains confirmation that such a will exists — that Trump left orders to destroy Iran if the Iranians kill him — then a frightened Trump, thinking he was deterring Iran, has instead signed his own death warrant from Israel. For them, Trump is expendable: he’s elderly, a lame duck, and not fully in his right mind. Sacrificing him — especially as he begins to diverge from Netanyahu — in order to provoke America into a full-scale war with Iran would be a very tempting prize.

Therefore, in this situation we must consider that the elimination of Trump would first and foremost be in Israel’s interest. And most importantly, Israel actually has the capability to do it — and to shape the information space afterward, since it controls many global information flows. Pinning it on Iran would be easy by creating a suitable pretext. This has happened many times before in American and Israeli history.

So I believe we are on the verge of a high probability of exactly this scenario. Of course, no one knows for sure. Even many intelligence services don’t know the full picture, and those who do will never tell. We won’t find out the truth, and it is pointless to discuss it empirically. What matters is the geopolitical context of the statements, not whether something is literally true or not. Whether an assassination attempt was really being prepared, whether the Iranians could have carried it out — all that is secondary. What matters is the image created in the global media. If the narrative sticks, everyone will believe it.

Host: Yes, I was just reading foreign media. There are already German officials commenting that Iran has a “revenge list” that includes both Merz and Macron, so security needs to be increased. This also seems to be part of the same conveyor belt.

Alexander Dugin: Exactly. Merz, Macron, and the rest can quite legitimately be targeted by the Iranians. It would be reasonable. But after the West carried out this unprecedented and completely unjustified act of aggression against a sovereign state — destroying its leaders without any condemnation from the Americans — Iran’s hands are now untied. I think Iran now has a free hand for any form of revenge. This is often said at conferences, in statements by Iranian leaders, and at rallies.

The question is one of capability and expediency. Here, I believe Iran is acting very rationally. It can strike American military bases in the Middle East and energy hubs in U.S. allied countries — the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, and to a lesser extent Qatar. Saudi Arabia is also being hit hard, and some rockets reach Israel.

So Iran could, with full justification, eliminate Trump or reach some European leaders, and the world would say little. They always accuse the victim anyway. But Iran is doing what it can: inflicting maximum unacceptable damage, closing the Strait of Hormuz, mining it. We will likely witness fiber-optic cables being cut at the bottom of the strait. Iran is achieving results with what it is capable of.

Nevertheless, for morale it says, “We will kill Trump.” And then Israel comes along with its usual chutzpah, saying yes, the Iranians want to kill Trump, beware — they’ve already tried, they’re getting closer. Especially since Lindsey Graham is already dead — a radical enemy of Iran himself. I wouldn’t even be surprised if the Iranians later claimed credit, even though it’s almost certainly not true.

Host: Speaking of the terrorist and extremist Lindsey Graham. While preparing for the broadcast, and as part of my job, I read many different versions of what actually happened: from a Russian strike on Kiev that Graham happened to fall victim to, to internal U.S. score-settling because Graham knew too much about the money going to Ukraine and was therefore removed. In your opinion, is this a natural cause, karma, or did someone have a hand in it?

Alexander Dugin: You know, no one will ever truly know, because if we had been involved, we would say we had absolutely nothing to do with it.

There was this monstrous enemy of humanity — Lindsey Graham. Of course, one is not supposed to speak this way about the dead, but it is not without reason. Even after Bin Laden’s death, he did not stop being a terrorist and extremist. He remains one, and his cause continues. Lindsey Graham and his legacy: the same neocons, the same Republicans calling to bomb Russians and destroy them. Do you know what Lindsey Graham said about Russians? He said that killing Russians is one of the best investments of American money.

Host: Yes, one of the best investments.

Alexander Dugin: That is why he was recognized as a terrorist and extremist. He never repented before his death. He died — and that’s it. So there is nothing for us to regret here. I think we will never learn the real reasons. Maybe it was a black mark sent by Mossad to Trump — which fits into the first part of our analysis. That would be entirely plausible: they can do anything and easily eliminate anyone on U.S. territory. They control many processes there and globally. For the Iranians it is much harder. As for us… I don’t know. Our intelligence services have not shown any bright operations lately, unlike in Stalin’s time. Back then there were truly convincing strikes against our enemies that made them tremble and respect us. We have abandoned that practice — in my view, unfortunately. So we rule out our involvement, and I don’t believe in it. If I’m wrong, I’ll only be glad, but I still think it wasn’t us.

I want to draw attention to the symbolism of this man’s death. And yes, it is striking: he was gay, a Zionist, a Russophobe, an extremist, a terrorist. A warmonger, an inciter of wars, a supporter and justifier of genocide who suggested dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza. He was a madman — an aggressive, perverted madman, the embodiment of everything we despise and hate in the modern West and in modern America. He truly was the worst of the worst. If he died of natural causes, then it is divine justice. It’s just a shame that none of the forces of good had a hand in it. But oh well.

However, I want to emphasize the symbolic nature of the death of this scum. The context is remarkable: in his last video, he was holding a drone with explosives in Kiev and saying that it would soon fly to Russia, and Russians would die — Russian children, Russian women, Russian old people. That was his last word. He also promised Zelensky — another terrorist and extremist — that he would push new sanctions against Russia through Congress, declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism together with Blumenthal, and called down other terrible punishments on our heads. In other words, he died in the middle of delivering yet another monstrous speech against us.

And after that, after his return to the U.S., according to Western press and Ukrainian media, Russian missiles destroyed the drone production facility where components for “Flamingo” missiles and other dangerous technologies were being assembled. An American senator who was threatening us was standing there, and as soon as he left, it was destroyed. No Ukrainian air defenses could save it. A wonderful symbolic context! But that’s not all.

This creature who threatened us with death and called for killing Russian children returns to the U.S. and immediately dies. He lived alone, no wife, no children — a true degenerate, a two-faced political pervert, an aggressor and a scoundrel. And suddenly, against this backdrop, he dies. They take him away and diagnose “sudden illness.” An illness so sudden that it lasted only a few minutes. Some bloggers are even suggesting we name one of our missiles “Sudden Illness.”

After this sudden illness he lives a few more minutes or hours and is gone. No factory, no Lindsey Graham. This is a powerful symbolic field. A huge part of the campaigns against us over all these years has been built on such symbolic actions. Russia is constantly being denigrated, mocked, and humiliated through them.

From a symbolic point of view, the entire story with Lindsey Graham is undoubtedly a major information victory for Russia — and for Iran and China as well. The stupidest thing we could do now would be to say “We had nothing to do with it, we respected Lindsey Graham…” Under no circumstances. The correct symbolic position is: a dog’s death for a dog. If a scoundrel and direct enemy dies, that is not a reason for sadness. This is an element of information warfare.

That is how it will be with each of them. That is how it will be with Mitch McConnell — he too is about to kick the bucket. The more people declare they have no intention of dying until new sanctions are imposed on Russia or until Russia suffers strategic defeat, the more symbolic grounds we will have for continuing our war.

I wanted to highlight how important this symbolic war is. Many people think the main things are decided on the battlefield and in the economy. That is all true and important. But the modern West has long shifted from the reality of facts to the reality of words and narratives. Postmodern philosophy, modern media, and modern wars are all network wars. In network-centric warfare, reality becomes secondary to discourse and narrative. Therefore, it is important to create the right image and story — even if it has little to do with actual reality. If done successfully and at the right time, that is already a colossal success.

This is what I want to emphasize: this symbolic way of waging war against us has become one of the West’s main strategies. This discourse, this narrative, this story about how bad we are and how good the West is, how we are losing while the Ukrainians are winning, how terrible our economic and political system is and how successful and effective our enemies’ system is — all of this flows into our society through thousands and millions of channels: social networks, information streams, diplomatic channels, and highly coordinated, centralized information systems. It penetrates inside us and is then rebroadcast by us ourselves.

This is precisely what victory in a network war looks like. You can show heroic resistance on the real battlefield, yet still lose the war on the virtual battlefield. Even if you are winning in reality. Some might say, “It doesn’t matter, we need a real victory.” That’s true — we do need a real victory. But the virtual field is also part of warfare.

I once asked an artificial intelligence an interesting question. I said: “Why did we — patriots, supporters of sovereignty, supporters of Russia as a state-civilization — lose to the liberals and Westernizers in the 1990s? They established external control over the country, from which we are now trying so hard to free ourselves.”

The AI gave several arguments, but one of them struck me. It said that although they represented a tiny minority — the pro-Western urban intelligentsia, criminals, and Western networks of influence — this minority in the 1990s managed to seize control of the symbolic field and describe the collapse of the USSR, the devastating reforms, the destruction of industry, and complete dependence on Western financial, economic, and even political institutions as a success, as progress, as development, as improvement.

In other words, a minority seized control of the symbolic field inside Russia and defeated the majority, which saw a completely different reality and did not agree with this narrative.

This is a very good and important example: in our time, a majority that controls reality can still lose the war if a minority controls the symbolic field. One of the main reasons for the defeat of the patriotic movement in the 1990s — which cost the country so dearly — was not our real shortcomings, not our small numbers, but the fact that the enemy (Western agents of influence) very skillfully and effectively seized control not even primarily over property, but over the symbolic sphere, over images. This allowed them to carry out the auctions, voucher privatization, the collapse of the country, and the emergence of a new class of oligarchs who plundered the entire nation and appropriated the labor of entire generations of Soviet people.

All of this became possible not only because they were economically effective or seized political power, but because this insignificant minority — publishers of magazines like Ogonyok, Moskovsky Komsomolets, liberal media outlets, and small companies — managed to take control of the symbolic field. That was the key to their victory and to the defeat of a great nation in that fundamental civil war that the 1990s represented.

We must not repeat these mistakes under any circumstances. We are being fought against both physically (on the field of reality) and informationally (on the field of symbols and images). This is cognitive war. There are enormous strategies, developed plans, and systems in which any information leak about one event and the concealment of another is not the random act of individual journalists, but a consistent, planned element of warfare.

Western journalism, Western diplomacy, the actions of various humanitarian funds and NGOs — all of this is managed from the same center where intelligence services, the Pentagon, and those who plan military operations dominate. Because in today’s world, a military or special services operation without information support simply doesn’t work — it is nothing. And vice versa.

Since the information factor in this war — the war of images, cognitive war, the war of civilizational narratives in education and science — is of enormous importance, nothing will work without consolidation. This is a subtle war, a war in the subtle sphere: in images, symbols, thoughts, explanations, and interpretations. Sometimes the freedom and autonomy of this symbolic sphere is so great that reality recedes into the background. We can be advancing, yet the image created is that we are retreating. We can be holding our ground perfectly, yet the image is that we are collapsing.

In this regard, we must not neglect the symbolic field or reduce everything to steel and tangible material things, as we are accustomed to doing. That is also important, no one disputes it, but the struggle of ideas, images, and minds is of paramount importance in our war.

Host: This is exactly why we, along with our colleagues, are working on this. Regarding the actions currently being taken against us, today there will also be a meeting of the so-called “coalition of the willing.” Dmitry Peskov, the President’s press secretary, has already commented on this, calling these countries a coalition of warmongers and stating that they will not be able to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. Is what is happening in Paris just another routine episode, or are we now on the threshold of a point where the “coalition of the willing” will move from words to direct action?

Alexander Dugin: I believe the answer here is unequivocal. First of all, this is not just words — it has long been actions. The coalition of the willing is already at war with Russia, and the level of escalation is constantly increasing in one direction only and never decreases under any circumstances. The question of when this turns into systematic NATO troop attacks on our territory is a matter of time, not a matter of “whether it will happen or not.” It is only a question of when.

Unfortunately, in this war of escalation, we are stuck in a defensive position. The West — this coalition of the willing, the collective West as a whole — raises the level of escalation at its own discretion. They can accelerate it, slow it down, pause certain aspects — whatever they want. But they are preparing for one thing only: a full-fledged, direct war against Russia. The only question is when they will feel they have a guarantee of a quick, swift, and irreversible victory. As soon as they believe that, they will move to the next level — direct attack. They are preparing to attack us. They do not hide it, they talk about it openly, and they will do it.

The other question is what we can oppose to this. I think (this is my philosophical view) that we must enter this escalation process and raise the level ourselves. Escalation is always a game of raising the stakes. If we could de-escalate, we should, but we don’t have the tools for that. When one of the two players only plays to raise the level, then to stop the escalation you must either surrender (which is unacceptable) or win (which is acceptable, but that requires engaging in the escalation and imposing your own model on the opponent).

Therefore, I believe we have only one choice. We cannot and will not surrender, and the current situation does not even allow us to consider it. So we must seriously engage in this escalation process imposed on us by those who wish us destruction. For example, if someone goes to this meeting and doesn’t make it… We have nothing to do with it, but they simply didn’t arrive. Symbolically, it just happened that way — the train derailed or something else occurred.

In my view, we must interfere with the West’s preparations for war against us, which they are actively engaged in, in order to seriously complicate those preparations. And complicate them in reality, not just through declarations by our political leaders. These declarations are very important, but the enemy has noticed that very often nothing follows these correct, sober, and balanced assessments. Or if something does follow, we are not told about it — and perhaps they are not told either. Or maybe they are told, but they simply hush it up.

What is very important here is that, in my opinion, the time for strong words toward the West, which is preparing for war with us, has passed if nothing concrete follows those words. If we lack arguments in the sphere of reality, we need to obtain them — one or several. We need this now, otherwise our words will be devalued.

Their words, the words of the coalition of the willing, are backed by the supply of increasingly lethal weapons and permission for strikes on all internal targets in Russia, which Trump essentially gave Zelensky at the NATO summit in Ankara. Their declarations are followed by actions: they threaten us and accompany those threats with concrete deeds. For a long time we said, “Let’s part peacefully, we have no claims against you.” Now we have begun to speak to the West a bit more adequately, but so far it is still mostly words. For the West, it has long been both words and deeds.

The balance between the real and the symbolic must always be maintained very carefully: we say something — and something bad happens to them. They say something — and something bad happens to us. That is what I want to say. It is painful for us, but I think we should not discuss the details… We have already exhausted the narrative that we are strong, that we are ready, that we see they want to inflict strategic defeat on us and are preparing for it, but they won’t succeed. We express this confidence, but it bounces off them like peas off a wall. Clearly, no one in the coalition of the willing even considers or takes such statements into account, because they are routine phrases behind which nothing follows — and they have grown used to it.

At some point, when things start going really wrong for them… Let’s be honest: they are causing us real pain. They are killing our people, our loved ones. They organize an endless series of terrorist attacks — we prevent many, but some succeed. They attack us from within, they try to paralyze our energy system. They don’t achieve their main goals, but they do manage to inflict painful blows. Meanwhile, they live safely in Western Europe, even as they supply the missiles, provide the data, and support it all.

Host: For example, the recently announced delivery of tens of thousands of drones…

Alexander Dugin: Exactly. So where are our deliveries of tens of thousands of drones to Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, or the Iranians? Maybe we are supplying some, but clearly not tens of thousands. And perhaps we don’t even have enough for ourselves? That’s another question. But if they are openly at war with us and directly supporting our enemies militarily, why aren’t we doing the same with their enemies? Why do they probe our weak spots, strike them, while we don’t probe theirs and don’t strike them at all — instead saying we have no issues with them? That is simply an invitation for them to continue unilateral escalation against us.

We see it, we record it, we notice it, we respond to it. But the time has come to back up our words with something concrete, so that everyone truly understands what it means to fight Russia. Because we already understand what it means to fight the West — it is already happening. Strikes are occurring and will continue to occur. Increasingly, we hear not only about drone strikes but also about aerial bombs falling on our facilities and our territory. So this is not Ukraine — and certainly not Ukraine alone. We are at war with the West. We are at war with the West today, and the coalition of the willing wants to inflict strategic defeat on us.

Of course, we have some trump cards, perhaps for extreme cases. But they have trump cards too — nuclear weapons. They are trying to carry out this escalation very gradually. Besides the ultimate trump cards, they have many mid-level options, and so do we — but for some reason we are not using them. I think the idea of using nuclear weapons (strategic or tactical) is truly the last resort. But there is a huge range of serious strikes we can inflict on the enemy that we are not using. And in my view, it is long past time. The entire front and the whole country are crying out for this.

The coalition of the willing is moving along its own path. Every meeting and every action has its own logic. They have a roadmap — a roadmap of escalation in relations with us. If they have an escalation roadmap, then for every gathering of the coalition of the willing, we must respond with something very convincing — preferably on their territory. I won’t go into further detail. But I will summarize: in the process of escalation, we must play both sides.

(Translated from the Russian)