Julie Lerat

Weekly current affairs show

Drug trafficking was invented by a state: the United Kingdom. In the 19th century, the British Crown flooded China with opium to replenish its coffers. From the very beginning, opium, heroin and cocaine became political instruments in the hands of states. Great powers, pharmaceutical companies, banks and intelligence services all played a role in the spread of drugs and in the emergence of the world’s largest criminal organizations. From the Opium Wars to the birth of the French Connection, from the hippie years to the rise of the great drug barons, from Escobar to El Chapo, from the mountains of Afghanistan to Wall Street, a political history of drugs takes shape.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC is the protector of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the military arm of the Supreme Leader. Also known as the Pasdaran, this deep-state mafia comprising 120,000 men has extensive powers, ensuring bloody repression of the people. No strangers to smuggling and trafficking, the IRGC’s economic empire is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The Supreme Leader Khomeini has allowed the organization to infiltrate the state and its members are now mayors, members of parliament and ministers, cultivating their networks at the highest levels. The IRGC is responsible for Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and cultivates not only the art of deterrence, but also a strategy of asymmetrical warfare via the militias and terrorist organizations they finance, arm, and control across the Middle East.