The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] is funneling billions of dollars of drugs to the West, according to respected London newspaper The Times. The report shows that despite Iran's zero-tolerance policy against drug smugglers and users, the IRGC is using the drug industry to covertly undermine the West.

"There are several commanders involved in smuggling narcotics. Raw opium or morphine is smuggled in from Afghanistan and developed in labs inside Iran," Sajjad Haghpanah, a former investigator with the IRGC's domestic intelligence division, told the Times. "They work with criminal gangs to move it overseas. They have their own ships, aircraft and haulage companies, everything needed for import and export. Their power is limitless."

Two officials named by the article are already active in the European drug trade, and American sources are cited saying that the organization wants to expand into North America.

The IRGC has been involved in the drug trade for years, said former Iranian diplomat, Abolfasl Eslami, who defected in 2006. The group was motivated by both a desire to fund the militia independently and to destroy the West. Elsami said he was present at a drug destruction operation carried out in front of United Nations inspectors. Afterward, he asked Republican Guard officials if they had really destroyed all the drugs. The IRGC leaders laughed, saying the "drugs would f*** up the sons and daughters of the West. We should kill them. Their lives are worth less because they are not Muslims."

The IRGC has also recently been implicated in a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States and to bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington. Iran has vociferously denied any connection to the plot, although a Saudi newspaper claims that the Iranian foreign minister has admitted it.