The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported Wednesday that it had discovered out-of-service Syrian tanks in the former demilitarized zone between the two countries — while Syrian rebels discovered the Assad regime’s captagon stockpile.

Captagon, known locally as “cocaine for the poor,” is an amphetamine-like drug that has been used by Islamic terrorists — including ISIS fighters, as well as Hamas terrorists in the October 7 attack. It may also remove the terrorists’ ordinary inhibitions, resulting in horrific atrocities such as those perpetrated against Israeli civilians.

The Assad regime had long been suspected of involvement in the captagon trade. As Breitbart News reported in 2023:

Captagon, also known as Fenethylline, is manufactured in gigantic quantities in Syria and smuggled across the Middle East. The smuggling rings allegedly enjoy protection from Syrian officials who are cut in for a piece of the action, including powerful members of dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime and Syrian military officers.

A key figure in the Captagon drug empire is allegedly Assad’s brother Maher al-Assad, who commands an elite armored division in the Syrian Army. The Iran-backed Assad regime generates a considerable portion of its income for military expenditures by selling the drug.

The Captagon trade is such a huge problem in the Middle East that the Arab League made cracking down on the drug a major condition for welcoming Syria back into its ranks. Some Arab League members said they had no more serious grievance with Damascus than Captagon smuggling. The fact that Syria’s dictator can see the top kingpin in the drug syndicate by looking in a mirror was delicately underplayed by Arab League diplomats.

Videos circulated on social media Wednesday apparently showing the discovery of the Assad regime’s captagon stash:

CNN added:

If confirmed, the discovery would support claims by the United States and others that the Assad regime had been involved in actively exporting the drug. Captagon has become a significant social problem in neighboring Arab nations and spurred some of them to engage in talks with the former Syrian regime to curb its trafficking.

It is a highly addictive drug, mostly containing amphetamine, that is sometimes described as the “poor man’s cocaine.” Studies over recent years have estimated the annual trade in the drug to be worth billions of dollars. It is believed to have become an economic lifeline for the Assad regime while it was under crippling American sanctions.

…

In 2023, the Biden administration drew up a strategy to combat the captagon trade, saying that the vast majority was “produced by local Syrian factions linked to the Assad regime and Hezbollah” and that “large quantities of these captagon pills are shipped from Syrian ports such as Latakia or smuggled across the Jordanian and Iraqi borders.”

Meanwhile, the IDF reported that it had discovered Syrian tanks in the demilitarized zone between the two countries. (One of the units involved was Israel’s 810th Mountain Brigade, which Breitbart News visited just three weeks ago.)

The IDF said in a statement: “The 810th Brigade and Shaldag Unit soldiers completed a brigade-level operation in the Syrian Hermon region within the Area of Separation. They located a Syrian army outpost containing a cache of weapons, including mines, explosives, anti-tank missiles, and additional military equipment.”

Some pro-Israel observers were skeptical that the tanks had been found in the demilitarized zone, since that would have constituted a violation of the armistice agreement of 1974 after the Yom Kippur War, and Israel would likely have attacked it.

The discovery of tanks fueled speculation that Israeli soldiers are in fact operating beyond the zone, deeper into Syria.

Israel has been conducting hundreds of airstrikes, naval launches, and other missions to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons facilities, as well as any military hardware that could threaten Israel or fall into the hands of the rebels.

Meanwhile, Israel relaxed restrictions on movement in its own territory on the Golan Heights. For several days, there had been military checkpoint in the region, owing to fears that Syrian rebels might try to infiltrate Israeli territory.

Rebel leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, known as Muhammad al-Jawlani or Abu Muhammad al-Golani, has named himself after the Golan, from which he claims family origins — and which he may want to seize from Israel in a future attack.
There have also been unconfirmed reports that Bashar al-Assad escaped to Russia with $135 billion, and that Syrian rebels are taking revenge against the Alawite minority group from which he comes, ethnically cleansing their towns.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.