Iran Is Using Drug Money to Fund Terrorism. We Can Fix That.

Since Oct. 17, Iranian proxies have targeted U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan over 160 times. On Jan. 28, three U.S. soldiers were killed, and more than 30 other service members were injured following a done attack conducted by an Iranian-backed militia. In response, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces launched a targeted airstrike in Baghdad, killing a senior leader of Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah. Unfortunately, these limited strikes have not stopped the near-daily attacks against the 900 U.S. troops based in Syria and the roughly 2,500 U.S. troops based in Iraq.  

With no end in sight, U.S. senators are demanding that the administration do more to deter Iranian aggression.  

“The administration’s military and economic responses to Iran and its proxies have not only been disproportionate, they appear to be completely disjointed,” argued Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and 24 Republicans in a letter addressed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. (READ MORE: Mr. Biden, Why Do You Hide Your True Self?)

The letter claims that “a strong signal of deterrence—utilizing military, economic, and diplomatic tools—is needed if we want to stop the attacks against U.S. personnel and prevent the war in Gaza from expanding into a protracted regional conflict.” 

Some Republicans argue that the administration must target Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp fighters directly and if that doesn’t deter Iran, to target Tehran’s strategic assets. 

Others are calling for the administration to freeze the $6 billion and additional $10 billion of sanctions relief money to Iran, to fully enforce U.S. oil sanctions, and interdict Iranian oil exports — all moves that would reimpose key elements of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure campaign.”  

Drugs Can (and Do) Fund Iran and Its Proxies

Economic pressure and military action are not enough. Drug smuggling also provides Iran and its proxies with alternative funding that it can use to ramp up attacks against U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq.

Illicit narcotics like Captagon are a major source of revenue for Iran and its proxies. Dubbed “the poor man’s cocaine,” Captagon is a synthetic amphetamine-type  stimulant that took off in 2018 and now bankrolls the Assad Regime and Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria. Popular Mobilization Force (PMF) militias like Kataib Hezbollah, for example, receive a cut of the $10 billion Captagon drug trade by providing cover for drug smugglers along the Syrian-Iraqi border. These groups are behind many of the attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq today. (READ MORE: The American People Know the Real Hamas)

Given the high demand for Captagon in the region, Lebanese Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies can tap into Captagon revenues when the U.S. implements additional sanctions against Iran. 

For its part, Congress introduced and passed several bills to mitigate the threat of Captagon. H.R. 4681 and H.R. 6265 sanctioned individuals tied to the trade and required the interagency to produce a strategy that would disrupt, degrade, and dismantle the illicit Captagon networks linked to the Assad regime. That strategy was released in June 2023.  

Following the Oct. 7 attack against Israel, the U.S. House of Representatives introduced H.R. 836, which called for the formation of an interagency counter-Captagon task force to “enhance interdiction efforts” through intelligence sharing and precursor supply flow monitoring. Such efforts are meant to limit Iran and its proxies of the ability to use drug money to finance terrorism in the region. 

Cut Drug Money to Defund Terrorism

This is not the first time that an Iranian-backed group used drug money to fund terrorism. According to a 2018 Treasury Department report, Lebanese Hezbollah receives an estimated $700 million annually from Iran and raises another $300 million from a vast network of illegal businesses tied to the Latin American drug trade.  

Hezbollah’s nefarious business dealings with Latin American drug cartels traced back to the 1980s when Lebanese nationals worked with cocaine drug traffickers in Colombia and South America. (READ MORE: The Spectacle Ep. 60: What Is Next in Israel? Nobody Knows.)   

Successive U.S. administrations throughout the 1980s and 1990s sanctioned Iran for its support for terrorism, which forced Lebanese Hezbollah to find alternative funding. The group relied on revenue from cocaine smuggling in Latin America to fund a series of attacks against U.S. and Israeli targets, including the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings and the 1994 bombing against a Jewish cultural center in Argentina.

Captagon is today’s cocaine. Sanctions may slow down Iran, but its proxies in the region can still  tap into the Captagon drug trade to finance attacks. The stakes are high for the United States. Iranian proxies are attacking U.S. troops daily with no end in sight. Cracking down on the  Captagon drug trade will cut off one revenue stream that Iran and its proxies use to fuel these attacks. 

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