The US senators parting gift could be the escalation of the Ukraine and Iran conflicts into a brutal world war

Vladimir Zelensky and Benjamin Netanyahu led a procession at US Senator Lindsey Graham's funeral service, as they sought to realize Graham's lifelong ambition of dragging the US deeper into catastrophic foreign wars.

Graham's casket was carried into the US Capitol on Tuesday, ahead of a funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral. A member of the House of Representatives for eight years and a Senator for 23, Graham died suddenly of aortic dissection as a result of heart disease on July 11.

Graham's legacy is one of constant agitation for US involvement in foreign wars. At the time of his death, Graham - who in 2022 called for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin - was working on an anti-Russian sanctions bill, and had just returned from Kiev, where hetoured a drone factoryand apparently expressed glee that the weaponry there would be used to kill Russians.

On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal published video footage of Graham reacting to the opening strikes of the US-Israeli war on Iran in February. "I almost cried," the Republican lawmaker said in the footage. "I mean, like, how long have we been pushing this? It's here. I talked with Trump this morning. Holy Jack. It's here. It's the best thing I've ever done."

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Even in his own comments at Graham's funeral, Trump repeatedly referred to the South Carolina Senator's enthusiasm for conflict. "He was extremely hawkish," Trump told mourners. "He never saw a war that he didn't like...he wanted it for the good of our country."

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Graham was an avatar of the Bush-era neoconservatism that still holds the Republican establishment in a death grip, and two attendees in particular arrived at his funeral service determined to give him in death what he longed for in life: a massive expansion of US involvement in Iran and Ukraine.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Trump at the White House on Tuesday morning, arriving one after another for their respective sit-downs with the US president.