SUBSCRIBER+EXCLUSIVE REPORTING — In the days after Hamas fighters launched a terrorist attack in Israel in October, an illicit amphetamine known as Captagon was reportedly found in the pockets of deceased Hamas terrorists. The discovery sparked speculation that the drug may have fueled the devastating onslaught, potentially enabling the terrorists to execute their horrific attack with a capricious feeling of elation.
Israeli security forces have repeatedly circumvented operations to smuggle thousands of Captagon pills from the West Bank into Gaza. But for every seizure, there are likely multiple successful deliveries.
There is more to this illegal drug trade than hyping up operatives on the battlefield – it’s a terrorism driver and financier to Iran’s propped-up Syrian regime and to Tehran’s multitude of proxy militants across the region.
“Captagon, and the drug industry, is important for Iran as the selling of these drugs reduces the financial burden on Iran’s treasury to fund its proxies,” Meir Javedanfar, a professor of Iranian and Middle Eastern Studies at Reichman University in Tel Aviv, told The Cipher Brief. “The Iranians are quite happy for Syrians to produce drugs and to sell drugs because the more they (the regime) can earn money, the more money Iran’s proxies can make, the less Iran has to help them financially. And this is a very important issue for Iran at the moment because it’s under tremendous sanctions from the United States and other countries.”
So, what exactly is Captagon? It is the brand name for the pharmaceutical compound fenethylline hydrochloride, originally manufactured out of West Germany in the 1960s, to treat depression, narcolepsy and attention deficit disorder. After its addictive nature was discovered, Captagon was outlawed in the 1980s; however, a counterfeit market soon emerged in the Middle East. The pills produced today, nicknamed “the drug of jihad” or “poor man’s cocaine,” contain not only fenethylline hydrochloride but also other fillers, including caffeine and a blend of other amphetamines.
Captagon’s rise in the war theater began primarily with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Soon after the civil war erupted in late 2011, the heavily-sanctioned Damascus government turned to drug trafficking networks to help evade economic hardship. As a result, Syria now orchestrates the entire manufacturing and discreet distribution process, giving the shattered nation the unsavory label of a “narco-state.”
Captagon labs, outfitted with special machinery, are located inside government-held territory. Syrian ports serve as a passageway to shipping routes in the Mediterranean and there are land passages to Lebanon and Jordan. The lucrative trade is protected and governed by the elite Fourth Armored Division of the Syrian Army, led by Bashar’s younger brother.
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But analysts say that Syria’s large-scale export operations would not be possible without the explicit involvement of Iran-sponsored militias – the same militias that have attacked U.S. and allied troops stationed in northern Iraq and Syria since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas. The militias command and control Syria’s borders and keep the Damascus reign afloat in the face of international sanctions and isolation.
“These militias have been reported to play a role in taxing and providing limited protection over Captagon trafficking efforts, as well as providing protection to small-scale production operations in southern Syria,” said Caroline Rose, Director of the Strategic Blind Spots Portfolio at the New Lines Institute. “With any actor implicated in illicit streams, this provides an alternative revenue source that can enable a state actor or non-state militant group to acquire arms equipment, utilize the trade for recruitment, and use agency over the trade’s routes and markets to increase territorial influence or direct control.”
It also can be useful to wage violent clashes against neighboring transit and destination countries as a way to demonstrate Iran’s evolving risk calculation for violence and direct confrontation, sending a message of intimidation to stakeholders like the Jordanian and Saudi Arabian governments.
Experts estimate that the fruitful Captagon enterprise is worth three times the cojoined commerce of Mexican drug cartels, bringing in around six to eight billion USD per year, a prominent portion of which goes to Iranian-backed armed wings to further their territorial control and weapons arsenals.
The Captagon-trafficking operations function not only for financial gain for Damascus and Tehran but as leverage over antagonist countries. In particular, many experts assert that the Gulf countries’ recent reengagement with the ostracized dictatorship is primarily based on the contingency that Damascus will, in return, suspend the production of Captagon currently flooding their nations.
At the crux of the operations, is Iran’s top proxy, Hezbollah.
“Hezbollah has been identified to have a strong association with the Captagon trade, conducting small-scale production operations in the Qalamoun Mountain Range and facilitating large-scale trafficking operations from Syria at Lebanese ports like Beirut and Tripoli,” Rose explained.
FBI records indicate that Hezbollah’s senior spiritual authorities justify the drug dealing as “morally acceptable if the drugs are sold to Western infidels.”
The U.S. State Department projects that Iran gives the Lebanese Shiite forces around $700 million annually, while Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups receive upwards of $100 million each year.
“The industrial-scale trade in Captagon, for decades a drug widely used in war, has been a lucrative source of funds for the Assad regime and Hezbollah financiers,” stressed Matt Zweig, Senior Director of Policy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). “It makes sense that Hamas would want to use these drugs not only for war but as an additional source of funds.”
So, what threat does this pose to the U.S., and what is Washington doing about it?
In December 2022, the U.S. introduced the 2022 U.S. Captagon Act, which referred to the Syria-originated trade as a “transnational security threat” and directed federal agencies to monitor and target the contraband industry amid concerns that the drug could eventually surface on American shores.
This past March, the United States and the United Kingdom implemented joint economic sanctions on Lebanese and Syrian operatives in the top echelons of the Captagon trade, including two cousins of Bashar al-Assad.
In June, the U.S. State Department unveiled a congressionally-mandated interagency game plan aimed at “targeting, disrupting and degrading” the spawning networks.
In November 2023, the House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously green-lit the bipartisan Illicit Captagon Trafficking Suppression Act to approve further sanctions against anyone duplicitous in the global trade.
The resolution “calls on the U.S. Government to enhance the Middle East region’s capacity to dismantle and disrupt the illicit production and trafficking of the amphetamine-type stimulant known as Captagon, including the production of precursor chemicals used to create the drug.”
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Zweig noted that while these are all steps in the right direction, the challenge lies in implementing all these policies and procedures.
“Additionally, as the trade expands and evolves, it will be important for the U.S. to continue to build accountability efforts, shine a light on what individuals are involved, and impose sanctions and punitive measures when deemed necessary,” Rose emphasized.
Experts like Rose caution that it may be a matter of time before Captagon poses a significant challenge on the Western black market.
“As of now, Captagon is primarily constrained to the Middle East, with occasional seizures in Africa, Europe, and Southeast Asia. One of the reasons for the drug’s lack of geographic expansion has been a lack of demand beyond the Middle East. There are many synthetic drugs and amphetamine-type stimulants that are deemed more competitive and desirable, compared to Captagon,” she added. “Additionally, while Captagon traffickers have conducted large-scale and sophisticated seizures that have reached countries as far as Germany and Malaysia, they have not yet built out the transnational criminal network required to conduct regular shipments that could spur demand in places like the U.S. I believe that we may see the drug’s incremental presence in Europe before we see it in the U.S.”
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