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
2012 Cyprus terrorist plot Yaakoub intended to carry out attacks led to his arrest. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the incident as an "attempted terrorist attack by Hezbollah against an Israeli target... conducted under Iran's auspices." On March 21, 2013, a three-judge panel in Cyprus convicted Yaakoub on five of eight charges, "including participation in a criminal organization, planning to commit a crime and money laundering." On March 28, the court sentenced Yaakoub to four years in prison. During the sentencing, the judges stated, "There is no doubt these are serious crimes which could have potentially endangered Israeli citizens and targets in the