Hezbollah European Union. After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 in support of the Free Lebanon State, Israel occupied a strip of south Lebanon, which was controlled by the South Lebanon Army (SLA), a Lebanese Christian militia supported by Israel. Hezbollah was founded in the early 1980s as part of an Iranian effort to aggregate a variety of militant Lebanese Shi'a groups into a unified organization. Hezbollah acts as a proxy for Iran in the ongoing Iran–Israel proxy conflict. Hezbollah was conceived by Muslim clerics and funded by Iran primarily to harass the Israeli occupation. Its leaders were followers of
Hezbollah armed strength a consequence of this setback and others like it, Hezbollah was forced to change its strategy. Outgunned by the Israelis and outspent by richer Lebanese sects and political parties, Hezbollah was forced to learn fast and reappraise its tactics, strategy, and organization. Suicide attacks gave way to "sophisticated, coordinated, and timed attacks" and short, quick ambushes. In May 1987, Hezbollah began to coordinate infantry and artillery as combined arms and "improved their capability to attack Israeli helicopters, and demonstrated improvements in extracting wounded from the battlefield." The group moved from squad-sized attacks around 1986 to platoon- and company-sized attacks by