Brigadier-General Ahmad Ali Goudarzi broke the news on Sunday, saying that the police forces gathered intelligence on the activities of a drug band at Saravan border regions and found out that the smugglers had plans to transfer the narcotics from the southeastern regions to the central parts of the country.
During the operation, the police forces seized two vehicles in addition to confiscation of 1,520 kilograms of opium and 18 kilograms of hashish, he added.
According to Goudarzi, the smugglers fled to the highlands of the area.
The Islamic Republic has been actively fighting drug trafficking over the past three decades, despite its high economic and human costs. The war on drug trade originating from Afghanistan has claimed the lives of nearly 4,000 Iranian police officers over the past four decades. The country has spent more than hundreds of millions of dollars on sealing its borders and preventing the transit of narcotics destined for European, Arab, and Central Asian countries.
According to reports, in 2018 alone, Iranian forces carried out 1,557 operations against drug traffickers, seizing approximately 807 tons of different types of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances.
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% of the global total.
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