US Senator blames Iran for Israeli captive deaths

“If you want the hostages home, which we all do, you have to increase the cost to Iran. Iran is the Great Satan. Hamas is the junior partner,” Graham told the ABC news programme This Week.

“I would urge the Biden administration and Israel to hold Iran accountable for the fate of [the] remaining hostages, and put on the target list oil refineries in Iran if the hostages are not released.”

Graham told Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “tell the Ayatollah [Seyed Ali Khamenei] what he values is on the target list. Until that happens, nobody is coming home”.

Israel’s military has announced that its troops have recovered the bodies of six captives, including a dual US national, from a tunnel in southern Gaza, as it continued its 11-month long military onslaught on the besieged strip.

Iranian officials have slammed the Israeli regime and its atrocities as the main factor behind expansion of tensions and conflict across West Asia. They considered the regime as the major obstacle in the way of establishing ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Tehran has also stressed that Washington is complicit in the ongoing Zionist regime’s atrocities in the besieged enclave. The US has given military aid to Israel throughout the months-long war on Gaza.

In July, the Gaza-based Palestinian movement Hamas agreed to a deal featuring withdrawal of the Israeli soldiers, return of the displaced people, an end to the siege that has been imposed by Tel Aviv on Gaza, and initiation of the territory’s reconstruction process. The regime, however, rejected the proposal before coming up with “new conditions,” including its keeping its forces inside Gaza along the coastal sliver’s border with Egypt.

More than 40,700 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched war on Gaza on October 7 following an attack led by Palestinian group Hamas that left more than 1,200 people dead. The Palestinian fighters took about 250 captives in the wake of the attack.

The coastal enclave has since been turned into rubble amid non-stop bombardment as Israel has been accused of stalling a ceasefire deal to free the captives.

Israel has been accused of war crimes and atrocities against Palestinians. The International Criminal Court persecutor has sought arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes.