Speaking to reporters in the northern city of Gorgan on Sunday, Brigadier General Ayoub Soleimani said with the establishment of a task force on the fight against narcotics, the seizures have reached 800 tons over the past three months, showing a 4 percent increase compared to the same period last year.
The number of police operations to combat illicit drugs has also doubled this year, he said, adding that the fatalities of smugglers and outlaws have also increased by two and a half times.
“We have been working to reduce the casualties inflicted on the police forces through smart operations and intelligence works and (as a result) we had only one martyr this year,” the commander noted.
Iran, which has a 900-kilometer common border with Afghanistan, has been used as the main conduit for smuggling Afghan drugs to narcotics kingpins in Europe.
Despite high economic and human costs, the Islamic Republic has been actively fighting drug-trafficking over the past decades.
The country has spent more than $700 million on sealing its borders and preventing the transit of narcotics destined for European, Arab and Central Asian countries.
The war on drug trade originating from Afghanistan has claimed the lives of nearly 4,000 Iranian police officers over the past four decades.