Female supporters of Lebanon's Hezbollah hold flags listening to their leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as he speaks on a video screen in Beirut, Lebanon February 16, 2018

Iran said on Monday it respected the votes cast by people in Lebanon's parliamentary election, where unofficial results showed Iran-backed Hezbollah and its political allies won just over half the seats, state TV reported. Lebanon's politics has been divided by the Syrian war, with some parties supporting the Iran-sponsored Hezbollah's intervention in Syria to aid President Bashar Assad, and other Saudi-aligned parties opposed to it. Hezbollah's gains in the Lebanese election on Sunday show that the state is indistinguishable from the Iranian-backed Shi'ite group and that Israel should not distinguish between them in any future war, an Israeli security cabinet minister said. The leader of Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah group declared “mission accomplished” after scoring major gains in parliamentary elections, as the main Western-backed faction headed by Prime Minister Saad Hariri lost a third of its seats. But he was still set to emerge as the Sunni Muslim leader with the biggest bloc in the 128-seat house, making him the frontrunner to form the next government.Iranian media appeared to gloat at Hariri setbacks; Iran’s hardline Tasnim news agency ran a report headlined: "Lebanese election result puts an end to Hariri’s monopoly among Sunnis. His main opponent, Hezbollah and its political allies, as well as rival Sunni parties have made gains, according to unofficial results. The official results were not declared on Monday morning as expected, and there was no new announcement of when they might be announced. The official results were not declared on Monday morning as expected, and there was no new announcement of when they might be announced.The staunchly anti-Hezbollah Lebanese Forces, a Christian party, however emerged as a big winner, nearly doubling its MPs to at least 15 from eight, according to the initial indications.Hezbollah, along with allied groups and individuals, secured at least 67 seats, according to a Reuters calculation based on preliminary results for nearly all the seats obtained from politicians and campaigns and reported in Lebanese media.Seats in the Lebanese parliament are divided according to a strict sectarian quota. Hariri's Future bloc won 21 seats, a drop from the 31 seats that it held before the election, which made it the country's largest parliamentary bloc.
In official results, Hezbollah and allied parties win a slight majority of seats in Parliament.