'Won't make any difference': For Iran & Hezbollah, Trump's victory means nothing

While Donald Trump, the president-elect of the US, continued receiving phone calls from world leaders congratulating him on his historic win, the leadership in West Asia reacted cautiously.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Thursday that the US election results “made no difference” to the Islamic Republic.

“It makes no difference to us who won the US election,” he said, quoted by the official IRNA news agency, adding Iran had prioritised “developing relations with Islamic and neighbouring countries”.

In his victory speech, Trump said that he would “stop all wars”, a rhetoric he has maintained throughout his campaign.

However, Hezbollah has little hope that the war will end with a change in the US administration. Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim al-Moussawi told Reuters, “It might be a change in the party who is in power, but when it comes to Israel, they have more or less the same policy.”

Meanwhile, a leader of Hamas told AFP that the US under Trump should “blindly support” Israel as Joe Biden did during his presidency.

“This blind support for the Zionist entity must end because it comes at the expense of the future of our people and the security and stability of the region,” Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau.

On the other hand, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed Trump’s victory by saying, “We are confident that the United States will support, under your leadership, the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people.”

With inputs from agencies