Hezbollah chief Qassem says Trump and Netanyahu were defeated at the polls

Naim Qassem, the secretary-general of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, used a speech marking the movement's Martyrs' Day to claim that US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been defeated. According to a news flash from Ynet, the Hebrew-language news site, Qassem said the two leaders were beaten and that Hezbollah had carried out its role.

The Times of Israel reported that the speech was delivered from Beirut and that Qassem framed the defeats as electoral ones. He argued that while Israel and the United States follow the same policies, both men had suffered losses at the ballot box, calling that "a positive development for us." He also set those setbacks against what he described as victory for Iran and for the armed groups he calls the resistance in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Who Naim Qassem is

Hezbollah is a Shiite Islamist movement in Lebanon that operates both as a political party and as an armed force, and it is backed by Iran. Israel, the United States and a number of other countries treat it as a terrorist organisation. Qassem, a long-serving senior figure in the group, became its secretary-general after his predecessor, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut. His speeches are carried by Al Manar, the television channel run by Hezbollah, and are closely watched in Israel for signals about the group's intentions.

What Martyrs' Day means for Hezbollah

Martyrs' Day is an annual commemoration in which Hezbollah honours its fighters who have been killed. The group's leaders typically use the occasion for a major political address, setting out how they see the regional situation and the movement's position in it. In this year's speech, as reported, Qassem cast the moment as one in which Hezbollah's adversaries had weakened and its allies had prevailed.

The election claims

The core of the speech, according to both reports, was the assertion that Trump and Netanyahu had been defeated. The Times of Israel described Qassem as celebrating recent election setbacks suffered by both leaders. Neither report, as published, sets out which specific votes Qassem was referring to or what he meant by defeat in each case. His remarks are his own characterisation and should be read as a statement of Hezbollah's political message rather than an assessment of the results.

Qassem quoted himself saying: "We can say that Trump and Netanyahu were defeated." The claim that Iran and allied groups across the region had achieved victory was likewise presented without detail in the reporting.

Weapons and disarmament

Qassem also returned to the question of Hezbollah's arsenal. According to The Times of Israel, he accused Israel of seeking to disarm Lebanon so that it could occupy the country, and he repeated that Hezbollah would not give up its weapons, which he described as needed for self-defence against Israel.

Disarming Hezbollah has been a central demand of Israel and the United States, and the issue has been a source of pressure on the Lebanese state, which has faced calls to bring weapons in the country under government control. Hezbollah has consistently rejected giving up its arms, and the position Qassem restated in this speech is in line with what the group has said before.

How the two reports differ

The two accounts overlap on the central claim but are not identical. The Ynet alert includes a line in which Qassem says Hezbollah fulfilled its role, which does not appear in the Times of Israel summary. The Times of Israel account, for its part, carries the remarks about Iran, the regional allied groups and disarmament, none of which appear in the short Ynet alert. Ynet's flash does not specify that the defeats Qassem referred to were electoral, while The Times of Israel does.

What the reports do not say

Neither report identifies the specific elections Qassem had in mind or gives any reaction to the speech from the Israeli government, the White House or the Lebanese government. Neither says whether Qassem addressed any current military activity between Israel and Hezbollah, and the full text of the speech has not been published in the material available.