“Zionists and the CIA’s intelligence and security agents stationed in the region are aiding drug traffickers to cross Iran’s borders with Afghanistan,” the interior minister said, as if to explain why the Interior Ministry has been unable to stop the influx of drugs over the decades.
But he said there is a new ploy by the Americans, who are now so furious with Iran’s successful challenges to America that they are investing huge sums to replace traditional drugs with industrial drugs, like methamphetamines, crack cocaine and morphine to change drug addiction habits in Iran.
Iran is now recognized as a major manufacturing site for methamphetamines, which are smuggled abroad in large quantities, chiefly to Southeast Asia.
He said the Americans were pushing industrial drugs because they are much more destructive to society than traditional narcotics, which in Iran means opium and its derivatives. Actually morphine is an opium derivative, so it wasn’t clear why Mohammad-Najjar listed it as an industrial drug. Crack is also not an industrial drug; it is a derivative of the coca leaf. But it is not a traditional drug in Iran.
Mohammad-Najjar did not provide any details of any American involvement in drugs in Iran. In Southeast Asia, especially Malaysia and Indonesia, the police have been reporting a huge surge over the past two years in the arrest of Iranian mules bringing methamphetamines from Iran, not to Iran.
The Islamic Republic has frequently accused the US Army of promoting drug cultivation in Afghanistan and helping traffickers bring opium into Iran. Officials point out that poppy production has surged in Afghanistan in recent years; they do not point out that the vast bulk of that production is in Taliban areas.