Hezbollah foreign relations fashion of bin Laden, we do not endorse them. And many of the operations that they have carried out, we condemned them very clearly." Michel Samaha, Lebanon's former minister of information, has said that Hezbollah has been an important ally of the government in the war against terrorist groups, and described the "American attempt to link Hezbollah to al-Qaeda" to be "astonishing". As part of a surge of intersectarian support for Hezbollah during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's deputy leader, called for Muslims to rise up in a holy war against Zionists and join the fighting in Lebanon.
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