Hezbollah leader welcomes electoral setbacks for Trump and Netanyahu
Naim Qassem described the election results as favorable for Hezbollah while reaffirming the group’s refusal to surrender its weapons.
By Evelyn Adeyemi ·
Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem welcomed recent electoral setbacks for US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, portraying the results as an opportunity for his Iran-backed group. Speaking in a televised address to supporters for Martyrs’ Day, he said the defeats would have favorable consequences for Hezbollah.
Qassem argued that Israel and the United States had followed the same policies, but that both leaders had nevertheless suffered at the ballot box. He called the outcome “a positive development for us” and described the American election result as an upheaval that would affect Trump’s ability to continue on his current course.
In his assessment, Trump’s setback amounted to a defeat for the leader confronting Iran, Lebanon, Palestine and Yemen. Qassem said the result presented Hezbollah with a good opportunity and maintained that its implications would be positive for the group.
Turning to Israel, Qassem said Netanyahu “has been broken” following elections last month in which his coalition lost its parliamentary majority. He also alleged that Israel sought to disarm Lebanon so it could occupy the country. Alongside that claim, he repeated Hezbollah’s position that it would retain its weapons.
The speech came after two wars with Israel weakened Hezbollah, which had previously held a dominant position in Lebanese political life. The group began attacking Israel in solidarity with Hamas after the Palestinian organization’s October 7, 2023, invasion from Gaza. Those attacks marked the beginning of the period of conflict described in Qassem’s address.
In the most recent war, Hezbollah brought Lebanon into the conflict with Iran on March 2 in support of its Iranian backers. Israel responded with massive airstrikes and later launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. An agreement to end the conflict was reached in June, although intermittent fighting has continued since then.
Implementation of that agreement remains obstructed by Hezbollah’s refusal to disarm. The deal links the withdrawal of Israeli forces from areas they held in southern Lebanon with the deployment of the Lebanese army, beginning in designated pilot zones. Hezbollah’s disarmament is a condition of those arrangements.
The group’s rejection of that requirement has hampered negotiations over the agreement. Qassem’s renewed insistence that Hezbollah would keep its weapons reiterated the position preventing progress on the planned withdrawal and Lebanese army deployment.
