The Iranian regime’s involvement in the international drug trade has been known for years. Following the 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, founded the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a private army tasked with protecting the Islamic Revolution. It has also played a central role in the international drugs trade, laundering dirty money for gangsters and cartel godfathers, helping the mullahs to overcome the impact of western sanctions, and providing the regime with the means to finance and supply its terrorist proxies. The IRGC controls more than 70 percent of the Iranian economy, pays no tax and is answerable only to the Supreme Leader. For decades, the IRGC and its extra-territorial Quds Force (QF), has provided funds, delivered arms, trained militants, and sponsored proxy wars, supporting Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza and the Shi’ite militias in Iraq.

The IRGC helped form Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has become a global network involved in various political, criminal, and terrorist activities for over 40 years. Listed as a terrorist organization by many western nations, Hezbollah operates cigarette smuggling networks, money laundering, extortion and drug trafficking across the Middle East, Latin America and the United States. Its involvement in the worldwide cocaine trade is well documented, with senior commanders from the IRGC using the proceeds to finance the regime’s warmongering and international terrorism, while also pocketing some of the lucrative takings.

Hezbollah is Iran’s most important and longest-standing non-state partner. In the wake of the assassination of IRGC-QF commander Qassem Soleimani, on the orders of President Donald Trump, Hezbollah has........

© Townhall