TEHRAN (Tasnim) – In a single operation carried out near Tehran on Sunday, Iran's police managed to capture two major drug smugglers and seize a large amount of illicit drugs, a senior commander declared.

On Sunday morning, police officers in Safadasht (west of Tehran province) were informed of a huge drug cargo being carried from Shiraz to Tehran, Brigadier General Mohsen Khancherli, a commander of Tehran's police, told the Tasnim News Agency.

He went on to say that the police forces stopped the van and found 65 packs containing 665 kilograms of opium in total.

In recent decades Iran has been hit by drug trafficking, mainly because of its 936- kilometer shared border with Afghanistan, where the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says accounts for 90% of the world’s opium.

The United Nations has estimated in the past that opium trafficking makes up 15 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, a figure that is likely to rise as international military and development spending decline with the NATO withdrawal at the end of 2014.

According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Iran is netting eight times more opium and three times more heroin than all other countries in the world combined.

By Tasnim News Agency