Asfura is Nasry Juan Asfura Zablah, commonly known as “Nasry ‘Tito’ Asfura.” He is a Honduran businessman and construction magnate of Palestinian origin and a long‑time member of the conservative National Party of Honduras. Politically, he served as a deputy in the National Congress before becoming mayor of Tegucigalpa (the capital’s Central District) from 2014 to 2022, and he previously ran unsuccessfully for president in 2021 before being declared president‑elect in the 2025 election.
Honduras held its presidential election on November 30, 2025. After a weeks‑long, disputed count, the National Electoral Council declared Nasry Asfura the winner on December 24, 2025, with about 40.3%–40.27% of the vote, narrowly ahead of Salvador Nasralla, who received about 39.5%–39.53%. The ruling LIBRE party’s candidate Rixi Moncada finished a distant third with roughly 19% of the vote.
Yes. The U.S. government, through Secretary of State Marco Rubio, officially congratulated President‑elect Nasry Asfura. In a press statement dated December 24, 2025, Rubio said: “The United States congratulates President‑Elect Nasry Asfura of Honduras on his clear electoral victory, confirmed by Honduras’ National Electoral Council. We look forward to working with his incoming administration to advance our bilateral and regional security cooperation, end illegal immigration to the United States, and strengthen the economic ties between our two countries.” The U.S. Embassy in Honduras published the same statement, and Rubio also publicly congratulated Asfura on social media.
The “Exception: forbidden” message indicates a technical or access‑control problem on the State Department’s main site, not a policy statement about the content. Other State Department properties (such as the U.S. Embassy in Honduras site) serve the same text without errors, and search indexes show the page exists, suggesting a misconfiguration or temporary outage/permission issue on that specific server path. The Department has not announced any deliberate access restriction on this press release.
Yes. The full press release text is available on the official website of the U.S. Embassy in Honduras, which mirrors State Department statements. It also appears in syndication on other government‑related or archival sites that reproduced the original release. These alternative locations allow you to read the complete congratulatory statement even though the primary state.gov link is returning an error.
To verify authenticity, you can: (1) Rely on the U.S. Embassy in Honduras website, which is an official U.S. government (.gov) domain hosting the same press statement; (2) Check that the wording matches other official references, such as State Department search listings or Spanish‑language translations, and (3) Compare key lines with reputable news coverage that quotes the statement. Consistency across these official and independent sources strongly supports that the statement is genuine even if the original state.gov URL is temporarily inaccessible.
A U.S. congratulatory message mainly signals political recognition and intent to cooperate; it does not by itself change treaties or funding levels overnight. In practice, such recognition can reinforce the legitimacy of the declared winner, set the tone for future collaboration on security, migration, and economic issues, and make it easier to sustain or adjust U.S. aid and security programs with the incoming government. But any concrete changes in assistance or policy toward Honduras would require separate decisions and processes beyond this single statement.