Hezballah and Syria caught in billion dollar drug bust

 Legal Insurrection:

Pro-Iranian terrorist group Hezbollah and the Iran-backed Syrian regime are behind a billion dollar drug bust made recently by the Italian police, news reports suggest. “The Italian police initially thought that Islamic State (ISIS) was behind the transaction. But after digging further, they pointed the finger at the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and his close Lebanese ally Hezbollah,” the Jerusalem Post reported Thursday.

“It is the largest haul ever seized, with a street value of more than $1bn” the BBC noted. The huge drug cache was part of the “lucrative narcotics trade likely run by the Syrian regime and its allies,” the broadcaster added.

Iran-backed Hezbollah, besides receiving generous funding from Tehran, has long relied on revenue from international drug trade and money-laundering for financing terrorism. The Shia-Islamic terror group has cultivated ties with Latin American cartels, smuggling drugs into Europe and the Middle East. The terrorist group, which used to get close to a billion dollars annually from Tehran, has been cash-strapped since President Donald Trump sanctioned the Iranian regime.

The Jerusalem Post reported:

Italy’s financial crimes unit detailed a large-scale drug trade believed to be originating out of Syria, according to an exclusive BBC report.

During the summer, the Italian authorities said they had seized about 14 tonnes (15.4 US tons) of the amphetamine Captagon arriving from Syria – about 84 million pills, worth around $1 billion – in what they described as the world’s single largest operation of its kind.

The Italian police initially thought that Islamic State (ISIS) was behind the transaction. But after digging further, they pointed the finger at the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and his close Lebanese ally Hezbollah.

BBC Middle East correspondent Quentin Sommerville stated that drugs are a major source of funding for Syria and the Lebanese terrorist group. He added that not only was the drug bust in Italy linked to Syria and Hezbollah, but a “wave of others across the world” has also been associated with the groups. (…)

Captagon is popular in the Middle East, and widespread in war-torn areas such as Syria, where conflict has fueled demand and created opportunities for producers.

Production was initially concentrated in Lebanon, and ISIS sells it to finance its activities, the Police said in a statement. It said Captagon was known as the “drug of the Jihad” after being found in terrorist hideouts, including one used by the Islamists who killed 90 people at the Bataclan theater in Paris in 2015.

Italian authorities believe the coronavirus lockdown across Europe has hindered the production and distribution of synthetic drugs, forcing traffickers to organize shipments from Syria, where these activities have not slowed down.

Europe bears some culpability in the Iran-backed terrorist group spreading its criminal tentacles across the continent. Despite U.S. pressure, the European Union refuses to place a complete ban on Hezbollah, allowing its “political” wing to freely operate in Europe.

...

There is more.

I think the Trump sanctions placed on Iran have forced Syria and Hezballah to be more entrepreneurial in the drug trade to survive.  This is in contrast to the Obama regime which funded Iran with billion to do the terrible nuclear deal.  While Hezballah has long financed many of its operations with the drug trade, they are more desperate without the cash flow from Iran.  By going bigger on the drug trade it was probably easier for police to catch them.