There’s a 70 percent chance the Trump administration will use the military option against North Korea if Pyongyang conducts another nuclear test, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
“I don’t know how to say it any more direct: If nothing changes, Trump’s gonna have to use the military option, because time is running out,” Graham told the Atlantic in an interview published Thursday.
Graham, who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he often talks with President Trump, specifically about Pyongyang. The two have also golfed together on multiple occasions this past year.
“There is no surgical strike option. Their [nuclear-weapons] program is too redundant, it’s too hardened, and you gotta assume the worst, not the best,” Graham said. “So if you ever use the military option, it’s not to just neutralize their nuclear facilities — you gotta be willing to take the regime completely down.”
Pyongyang launched its seventh missile test late last month and claimed the test used a new type of ballistic missile. Experts were concerned that the test demonstrated an increasing capability of striking the entire U.S. mainland.
The North Korean threat has remained a front-and-center issue for much of the Trump presidency, and according to the Kremlin, Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone Thursday and discussed North Korea.
Graham said he is in favor of direct talks with the regime and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “without a whole lot of preconditions.”
“I’m not taking anything off the table to avoid a war,” he said. “When they write the history of the times, I don’t want them to say, ‘Hey, Lindsey Graham wouldn’t even talk to the guy.’”
Graham said his solutions for resolving the conflict without engaging in warfare includes a regime change in Pyongyang, although the Trump administration has claimed they are not attempting to pursue a regime change.
There have been mixed messages from the Trump administration of late on the North Korean issue. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signaled a softening of his stance on negotiating with the North Koreans, saying this week that the State Department is willing to talk with officials from Pyongyang “without precondition.”
The White House later pumped the brakes, saying that Trump’s views on North Korea, which has repeatedly threatened the U.S. with its missile and nuclear weapons programs, “have not changed.”
