By Samah Abdul Fattah | 2025-02-12

Despite recent setbacks in Syria, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is determined to maintain its trade in illegal drugs, which provide the Iranian regime and its proxies a vital source of revenue, security experts said.

The IRGC and Lebanese Hizbullah have relied on an extensive Syria-based Captagon manufacturing network to fund their operations, former Hizbullah operative Salah Mansour told Al-Fassel.

But these enterprises suffered a devastating blow following the Syrian regime's collapse, he said, triggering a funding crisis for the Iranian regime's proxies.

"Dozens of factories and warehouses containing millions of pills were exposed, halting smuggling operations abroad and costing the IRGC and its proxies millions in monthly revenues," Mansour said.

The Iranian regime played a central role in the regional Captagon trade, Qatar University assistant professor and Atlantic Council non-resident senior fellow Ali Bakir said in a January 1 analysis published by Anadolu Agency.

"In most cases, the machines used to massively produce the Captagon and the related drugs were imported from Iran and the initial money needed to finance this trade came from the Iranian regime," he said.

He noted that the IRGC also maintained control over key export points such as Syria's Latakia port, while coordinating with local criminal networks to establish industrial-scale production capabilities.

As for Iran's so-called "axis of resistance," he said, it is "nothing but a drug line."

Regional security implications

After the collapse of the Syrian regime, the Iranian regime began transferring manufacturing facilities to parts of Yemen controlled by the Iran-backed Houthis, Iranian affairs expert Fathi al-Sayyed told Al-Fassel.

This is an attempt to salvage its drug trade by transferring these operations to the Houthis, he said, with the help of "specialists" from Hizbullah and the IRGC.

Illicit drugs will be moved around the region via the Houthis' well-established smuggling networks in the Red Sea region, he said -- "the same routes the IRGC used for years to smuggle weapons into Yemen from Iran."

The significance of the Captagon trade cannot be understated, al-Sayyed stressed, with annual revenues reaching billions of dollars.

"The Syrian regime considered Captagon production a matter of survival following the economic collapse during the decade-long war, while Hizbullah relied entirely on this trade to fund its activities," he said.

Security experts warn that the IRGC's continued access to drug revenues will prolong regional instability, undermining efforts to contain Iranian hegemony.

"Given Iran's deteriorating economic conditions and inability to support destabilizing activities, it will do whatever necessary to maintain this trade," al-Sayyed said.