TEHRAN – The Intelligence Ministry has announced that its forces have dismantled the largest drug smuggling band in the southern province of Hormozgan.

In a statement, the ministry said the drug trafficking band carried drugs from one of neighboring countries by vessels and fishing boats to the coasts of Hormozgan, Mehr reported on Monday.

The band was also in charge of drug distribution in Iran besides transiting drugs to other countries.

Despite high economic and human costs, the Islamic Republic has been actively fighting drug-trafficking over the past decades.

The country has spent more than $700 million on sealing its borders and preventing the transit of narcotics destined for European, Arab and Central Asian countries.

In comments on July 9, Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht Ravanchi said 3,815 Iranian police forces have lost their lives and over 12,000 others have been wounded in the war against drug trafficking over the past 40 years.

According to the “World Drug Report 2019” of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in 2017, Iran had seized “the largest quantity of opiates … accounting for 39 percent of the global total,” Takht Ravanchi stated.

MH/PA