Gholamreza Baghbani is the former chief of the Zahedan Office of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force (IRGC-QF). During the Iran-Iraq war, he participated in several military operations, and  after the war, he served in various operational positions within the local IRGC in his home province, Zabol, until he became the commander of Ansar base, which is used to train Afghan Shia soldiers.

However, the US Department of the Treasury recently sanctioned General Gholamreza Baghbani, who served as the chief of the IRGC-QF office in Zahedan, near the Afghan border. He is known as a narcotics ‘kingpin’ for facilitating Afghan drug runners to move opiates into and through Iran. In return, as the Treasury said in a statement, “Afghan narcotics smugglers moved weapons to the Taliban of Baghbani.” The IRGC, of which Baghbani is a member of, with the help of its backed militias from Lebanon and Iraq has shipped illicit drugs such as hashish and captagon to Europe and the world through Iraq and Turkey.