Iran sealing eastern borders to stem drug flow

Iran’s Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar says his ministry has allocated a large budget to close off Iran’s eastern borders against drug trafficking.

“A budget, totaling 1,060 trillion rials (nearly $108 million), is earmarked to prevent drug trafficking,” Mohammad-Najjar said in Zahedan.

“Border posts have been constructed in the southeast of the country; new crossings have also been established; and wide, deep canals, concrete walls and embankments have been created to seal off eastern boundaries,” he said explaining about the ongoing project.

Iran lies on the narcotics transit corridor from Afghanistan — where militants, criminal organizations, and corrupt officials exploit narcotics as a reliable source of revenue — to drug kingpins across Europe.

Iran’s US-occupied easterly neighbor, Afghanistan, accounts for roughly 79 percent of the world’s opium and heroin trade, according to the United Nations Drug Control Program.

Since the triumph of Islamic Revolution in 1979, the country has lost more than 3,300 of its security forces in its relentless counter-narcotics campaign.