The Iranian regime has developed chemical weapons based on opioids, including fentanyl, and could supply them to its regional terrorist proxies including Hamas and Hezbollah, a U.S. expert warns.
Pharmaceutical-based agents, or PBAs, are weaponised drugs with the ability to incapacitate or kill their victims, Hamas expert Matthew Levitt explained in October's CTC Sentinel, a journal published by the U.S. Military Academy at West Point's Combating Terrorism Center.
Levitt serves as the director of the Reinhard Programme on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and has testified for the U.S. government in numerous terrorism trials since the early 2000s.
The article, which was picked up by US media on Sunday, warned that "groups such as Hezbollah already have the delivery systems necessary to deploy such chemicals, including grenade launchers and mortars."