Iranian Justice Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi lashed out at the so-called western advocates of human rights for their opposition to the punishment of drug trafficker in Iran.

"We do not accept the statements made by the UN human rights bodies that drug-related convicts should not be executed," Pourmohammadi said on Tuesday.

He underlined that anyone who smuggles and distributes narcotics deserves to be executed.

Pourmohammadi noted that Iran has been a victim of drug trafficking over the past three decades and it has sustained a lot of losses in this regard so far.
Iran's geographical position has made the country a favorite transit corridor for drug traffickers who intend to smuggle their cargoes from Afghanistan to drug dealers in Europe.
Sistan and Balouchestan province, where Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan come together, has porous borders, where bandits and drug traffickers operate despite frequent entanglements and intense efforts of the Iranian law enforcement police.

Iran has recently established a central database and strengthened police-judiciary cooperation in a new effort to combat organized crime.

Nearly 4,000 Iranian security personnel have been killed fighting drug smugglers since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

In October 2013, Iran's Interior Minister and Head of the country's Anti-Narcotics Headquarters Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli called on the world states to boost their cooperation with Tehran in the combat on drug trafficking in a bid to decrease and stop transit of narcotics.

 

"At present, the Islamic Republic of Iran is alone in bearing the heavy responsibility of fighting against the transit of drugs from its origin, Afghanistan, to the world and has paid heavy financial and spiritual costs and a large number of our security and police forces have been martyred and injured to this end," Rahmani Fazli said in a meeting with Algerian Police Chief Major General Abdul-Qani al-Hamid in Tehran.

Last month, Iran's Deputy Ambassador to the UN Gholam Hossein Dehqani underlined that Iran is paying a heavy price for its campaign against narcotics, and voiced his dissatisfaction in the lack of substantial support by the world states and international bodies for Tehran's war on drugs.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has thus far played an important role in its operations aimed at blocking its Eastern borders with Afghanistan in anti-narcotic drugs campaign,” said Dehqani in an address in the 3rd Committee of the UN General Assembly on narcotic drugs trafficking.

He reiterated that Afghanistan is presently the largest provider of opium in the world.

The Iranian envoy at the UN referred to the high casualties of the Iranian police officers in campaign against that malicious phenomenon, in addition to spending millions of dollars to control its border by creating obstacles for different countries, specially with Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“During the course of the recent years one of the mounting crises for us has been the increased usage of the sea paths for trafficking of narcotics from the region and vice versa,” reiterated Dehqani.

He said that due to that change of tactics of the traffickers, campaign against it, too, is in need of more advanced facilities and greater investments.

Dehqani said that despite the existence of the illegally imposed sanctions against Iran, it has still remained committed to observing the rules of the international campaign against narcotic drugs trafficking.

Iran has always lambasted the NATO forces in Afghanistan for increasing drug cultivation, production and trafficking in Afghanistan, and said that almost all the world opium production is done in front of the eyes of the foreign troops in Afghanistan.

The Iranian police officials maintain that drug production in Afghanistan has undergone a 40-fold increase since the US-led invasion of the country in 2001.

While Afghanistan produced only 185 tons of opium per year under the Taliban, according to the UN statistics, since the US-led invasion, drug production has surged to 3,400 tons annually. In 2007, the opium trade reached an estimated all-time production high of 8,200 tons.

Afghan and western officials blame Washington and NATO for the change, saying that allies have "overlooked" the drug problem since invading the country 10 years ago.