By Anas al-Bar | 2023-12-15

Drug smuggling from Iran to markets in the Middle East is expanding, officials say, forcing the region's governments to enhance coordination to curb the sale and abuse of illegal narcotics.

For years, groups linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have been engaged in the manufacture, smuggling and trafficking of drugs regionally -- including crystal meth, opiates, Captagon and hashish -- using the generated revenues as a main source of financing.

Captagon, a black market amphetamine (Fenethylline) once notorious for its association with "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) fighters, has become one of the most commonly available narcotic substances.

Syria, with the support of the Bashar al-Assad regime and Iranian militias, has become the largest producer of Captagon, according to regional anti-narcotics officials and analysts.

"What distinguishes this drug is that it is easy to manufacture," said Mudar al-Asaad, the general coordinator of the Supreme Council of Syrian tribes. "A chocolate or candy-making machine can be modified to produce 700 Captagon pills per minute and millions of pills per day."

Raw chemicals used in the manufacture of Captagon, the most important of which is amphetamine, are difficult to obtain, so Iran-backed militias decided to manufacture it locally and add caffeine and sweeteners to it.

Fueling the Syrian 'narco state'

Captagon and other drugs are smuggled from Iran and Syria to neighboring countries, including Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon, with the goal of reaching both local youth and larger markets in the Gulf states.

There are "complex and decentralized" networks that not only manage production but also are responsible for cross-border smuggling and sales, al-Asaad said.

These networks include Lebanese Hizbullah and Iran-backed militias of foreign fighters, such as Fatemiyoun and Zainabiyoun, along with senior members of the al-Assad regime and its military forces -- the 4th Division, Intelligence Unit 215 and private security companies such as the Russian Wagner Group, he said.

The illegal drug trade is immensely lucrative for Syria, according to Charles Lister, director of the Syria and Countering Terrorism and Extremism programs at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC.

In 2021, about $5.7 billion worth of Syrian Captagon tablets were seized abroad, almost doubling the $3.5 billion worth seized in 2020, and much higher than Syria's annual legal exports of about $800 million, he said.

The drug seizures, which increased again over the course of 2022, represent only 5-10% of the total Captagon trade in Syria, Lister said, citing informed regional officials.

In short, Syria has become a "narco state" and its huge output of Captagon eclipses that of the Mexican cartels, Lister said during a webinar held by the Harmoon Center for Contemporary Studies.

"The money from the Captagon trade is crucial for the regime to feed its repression machine," Jihad Yazigi, founder and editor of the Syria Report, told VICE World News. "Captagon exports represent the single most important contribution to foreign currency earnings for the Syrian economy."

But the profits do not feed the Syrian economy, he said.

"Overwhelmingly revenues from the trade go to the pocket of powerful regime cronies, thugs and Iranian-affiliated militias, the people who are very harmful to the Syrian population, the people with blood on their hands," Yazigi said.

Funding Tehran's agenda

The revenues generated from Captagon and other drugs such as hashish, opium and heroin "fund Tehran's agenda to tamper with the security and future of peoples in the Middle East and destroy their capabilities," al-Asaad said.

The drug smuggling also poses serious challenges for governments in the region working jointly to undermine this dangerous threat.

Lebanese authorities seized around 800kg of drugs destined for Kuwait via the Netherlands, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) Sunday (December 10).

The drugs were "professionally" concealed in wooden figures inside a bulletproof box, the statement said, without specifying the type of narcotics seized, AFP reported.

Jordanian authorities in recent days made several arrests and seizures of drugs, including crystal meth, hashish, cocaine and other narcotic pills, the Anti-Narcotics Department said on Facebook Thursday.

Most recently, Jordanian law enforcement agencies foiled an attempt to smuggle 260,000 narcotic pills from a house in Jerash governorate, it said.

The Jordanian army also thwarted infiltration by a number of smugglers from Syria who were in possession of 119,000 Captagon pills, 15,000 Tramadol pills and 1,748 palms of hashish (a measuring unit about the size of the palm of the hand), a military source with the Jordan Armed Forces said Wednesday.

Last December, Jordanian authorities seized six million Captagon pills at its border with Iraq. The pills were hidden in date paste inside two refrigerated trucks.

Weighing one ton, it was one of the largest such hauls ever intercepted, the Jordanian Customs Department said.

During the past year, Jordanian authorities shot down nine drones coming from Syria carrying crystal meth.

Joint efforts to counter drug smuggling

Jordan, which shares borders with Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, is often just a transit point for illegal narcotics smuggling.

This year, Saudi Arabia seized smuggled shipments of millions of tablets of amphetamine used for making crystal meth, including 12 million tablets that arrived at the port of Jeddah and were hidden in a shipment of pomegranates.

Two years ago, Riyadh banned the import of vegetables and fruits from Lebanon after uncovering smuggling operations it described as "systematic" by Hizbullah to flood the country with drugs, harm trade relations between the two countries and drain national wealth.

Iraq is also coordinating with neighboring countries to curb the smuggling of Iranian drugs through its territory.

"There are memoranda of understanding and almost daily communications with officials of neighboring countries... and high coordination to track the international drug trade," Maj. Gen. Khaled al-Muhanna, director of public relations at the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, told the official news agency on Tuesday.

Almost 90% of narcotics enter Iraq from its eastern border with Iran, officials told Asharq al-Awsat in September 2022.

At the time, Fadel al-Ghrawi, a former member of the Independent Human Rights Commission, warned about the spread of drugs in the country, particularly among youth aged 15-35.

"The high rates of drug abuse in recent years have become a threat to the lives of young people," he said, urging the government to open drug rehabilitation clinics "instead of imprisoning them along with drug dealers."