Iran has likely developed fentanyl-based chemical weapons, warns a US expert

Iran has developed chemical weapons based on synthetic opioids, a US expert warned in an article written for the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point. These powerful agents could incapacitate soldiers or civilians when added to grenades or artillery, wrote Matthew Levitt. Pharmaceutical-based agents, or PBA, are reportedly weaponized medicines that incapacitate or kill their victims. These weapons are based on substances such as fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that has ravaged the US leading to thousands of deaths. These weapons are aimed at rendering targets unconscious as they affect a victim’s central nervous system. “Once inhaled, these agents cause victims to lose full consciousness, ” Levitt wrote.

Highlights

• Iran is believed to have weaponized pharmaceutical agents to kill or incapacitate.
• These chemical weapons affect a victim’s central nervous system.
• These are especially a problem if Iran supplies them to militant allies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and and Hamas in Gaza.

Iran has developed chemical weapons based on synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, warns a US expert, powerful agents that could incapacitate soldiers or civilians when added to grenades or artillery.

Pharmaceutical-based agents, or PBAs, are essentially weaponized medicines that incapacitate or kill their victims depending on the exposure. Iran may have given PBAs to its proxies, such as Hezbollah, which could use them to kidnap Israeli troops and civilians.

“At a time of growing regional instability in the Middle East, largely the result of the militancy of Iranian proxies, the threats posed by Iran’s weaponized PBA program can no longer be overlooked,” Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute think tank, wrote in an article for the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point.

The US Government Accountability Office defines PBAs as “chemicals based on pharmaceutical compounds, which may or may not have legitimate medical uses, and can cause severe illness or death when misused.” They include opioids such as fentanyl and tranquilizers for animals.

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