The intelligence forces of the southern province of Kerman managed to seize the arms cache from the criminal rings in parts of the province of South Khorasan and the province of Sistan and Balouchestan.
The weapons include two handguns, five AK-47 machine guns, a grenade launcher, a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher with 6 rockets, an SPG-9 gun, five 107mm rockets, 68 cartridges for the DShK (Dushka) machine gun, and 40 grenades.
A couple of months ago, the intelligence forces confiscated a cache of brand-new weapons from a drugs ring in the city of Saravan, southeastern province of Sistan and Balouchestan.
In addition to a 500-kg haul of opium seized in the operation, the intelligence forces had confiscated a remarkable amount of new arms and ammunition from the gang.
An Iranian official said the seizure reveals the close links between narcotics trafficking and terrorism.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the link between terrorism and drugs trafficking is evident and has been recognized by the UN Security Council.
There have been numerous accounts identifying a linkage between drugs and terrorist networks that take multiple different forms, ranging from facilitation, protection, transportation, and taxation, to direct trafficking by the terrorist organizations itself in order to finance its activities, UN reports say.