TEHRAN - Commander of Sistan-Balouchestan Province’s border guards announced on Tuesday that 1,560 kg of drugs have been seized in the Saravan border region.   

Second Brigadier General Mohammad Mollashahi said, “The border guards of the Saravan border regiment, tipped off by the intelligence, ambushed a convoy of drug traffickers and managed to seize 1,488 kg of opium.”

He said the seizure took place after heavy clash with the drug traffickers.

Mollashahi added, “In another operation, our forces arrested a drug trafficker and seized almost 73 kg opium in the province.”

In late January, Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s ambassador and permanent representative to the Vienna-based international organizations, said that Iran seized totally 814,477 kilograms of different types of narcotic drugs in 2019.

In a statement published by the website of Iran’s permanent mission to the UN office in Vienna on Friday, Gharibabadi said that 656,258 kg (more than 80 percent) of the seized narcotic drugs were opium.

“Other major drugs seized by Iran, include Hashish (73,928 kg), morphine (18,185 kg), heroin (17,414 kg), and methamphetamine (13,570 kg),” the ambassador explained.

“Through 2319 clashes with drug traffickers, Islamic Republic of Iran dismantled 1,886 rings and networks involved in the transit and supply of narcotic drugs in 2019. Five brave and courageous Iranian anti-drug agents were martyred in 2019 while fighting with traffickers,” he added.

Eskandar Momeni, chief of Iran’s drug war commander, said in December that Iran had been fighting against illicit drugs on behalf of the world.

Iran, which has a 900-kilometer border with Afghanistan, has been used as the main conduit for smuggling Afghan drugs to narcotics kingpins in Europe.

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.

MJ/PA