Iran funds terror through counterfeiting, drug trade

A report from the Green Experts of Iran, an opposition group with sources inside the Islamic republic, has provided details of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ connections to drug trafficking, money laundering and counterfeiting. The report confirms an interconnected web of criminal enterprises, run by the Guards and often facilitated by Iranian diplomatic consulates, intended to fund the Iranian military’s worldwide terror operation.

The Revolutionary Guards’ Mafia-like network in Europe has grown steadily since Iran’s 1979 revolution.

Last year the U.S. government designated Iran as a “Primary Money-Laundering Concern,” and imposed new sanctions on Iran’s energy sector.

And on Wednesday the U.S. government named Gen. Gholamreza Baghbani, a general in Iran’s elite Quds force — a branch of the Guards — as a narcotics “kingpin,” citing his career of facilitating heroin trafficking from Afghanistan into Iran.

The Green Experts of Iran report, written in Farsi, reveals a grand project by the Guards called “Time for the Collapse.” The Guards, according to this plan, intend to destabilize the West through terror, drugs and money laundering.

News media have widely reported that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in his power struggle with those loyal to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has talked of many secret ports across Iran that are used by the Guards for illegal smuggling.

About 17 months ago, the report states, members of a drug gang were arrested in Baku, Azerbaijan. Among them were two Iranians whom Iran’s consulate shielded from prosecution. But other members of the gang were citizens of Azerbaijan, Albania and Tajikistan. They confessed to their connection to the Revolutionary Guards’ drug network.