US says Iranian general key in Afghan heroin trade

Washington on Wednesday named a general in Iran's elite al-Quds force as a key figure in trafficking heroin from Afghanistan. The US Treasury designated General Gholamreza Baghbani, who runs the Revolutionary Guards' Quds force office in Zahedan near the Afghan-Pakistan border, as a narcotics "kingpin" for facilitating Aghan drug runners to move opiates into and through Iran.
In return, the smugglers helped move weapons for the Taliban from Iran "on behalf of Baghbani," the Treasury said in a statement. It said that Baghbani had also aided the smuggling of chemicals used to make heroin through the Iranian border into Afghanistan. He was the first Iranian to be officially named as a "specially designated narcotics trafficker" under the US "Kingpin Act".