Inside the trans-Atlantic trade in Iranian weapons for Colombian coke

The disheveled 58-year-old, who went by Tony, was a cousin of the recently deposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He had traveled to Kenya planning to meet a supposed arms inspector from a Colombian rebel group and complete a $14 million deal to import 500 kilos of cocaine to Syria in return for military-grade weapons supplied by Iran and Russia.

Kassis didn’t know the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency had been watching him for two years. As he waited in a cafe, U.S. agents accompanied by Kenyan police approached him. Two months later he was extradited to the U.S., ending a lengthy sting operation.

A district court in Virginia this past week found Kassis guilty on conspiracy charges to commit narco-terrorism and support a foreign terrorist organization—the Colombian National Liberation Army, or ELN—making him one of the first high-ranking Assad loyalists tried in a Western court.

The trial exposed a scheme spanning four continents, offering a rare window into a trans-Atlantic trade in weapons and drugs between Iranian allies in the Middle East, and cartels and rebel groups in South America.

Kassis had no direct links with Iran, but the weapons he offered—including Stinger missiles, drones, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns—came from stockpiles supplied by Iran and Russia, the prosecution said. The trading route he used was forged by the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, part of a global criminal empire.

The illicit empire is one of the ways the Islamic Republic has brought in money for decades while under international sanctions. As long as some semblance of the current regime in Tehran remains, its allies are likely to continue fueling a global trade in arms and drugs, particularly as Iran seeks to recuperate from war with Israel and the U.S.

“Iran is going to double and triple down on a wide array of illicit revenue opportunities,” said Matthew Levitt, counterterrorism expert with the Washington Institute think tank. “There will be opportunities for additional Tony Kassises to find a larger niche within which to operate.”

The scheme shows how the violence of conflicts and failed states can metastasize for years, with profound and distant implications. Weapons from the former Yugoslavia helped drive the Libyan civil wars after 2011, later fueling rebellions in Mali and across the Sahel. The Balkan wars pushed vast numbers of small arms into the Middle East, and into the hands of criminal gangs in Western Europe.

Experts have warned that Assad’s military arsenals could fall into the hands of criminals and terrorists. As the Kassis case shows, they could end up in the U.S.’s backyard.

Running Iran’s operations abroad is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a military and economic behemoth controlling a large international black market that helps Iran skirt sanctions and support loyal militias.

“It’s like a dragon with seven heads. Each head is called IRGC but is independent from one another,” said Mohsen Sazegara, who helped found the Revolutionary Guard in 1979, and is now a pro-democracy activist based in the U.S.

Hezbollah, Iran’s most important foreign ally, has for decades used illicit financial activities in South America—smuggling, document fraud and money laundering—to fund its activities and make itself, and Iran, resilient to economic pressure.

“Even if there is regime change in Iran, these proxy groups are independent and they can run themselves,” Sazegara said.

In 2022, an undercover DEA asset in Colombia named “Selma” had infiltrated a Lebanon-based money-laundering network whose clients included the ELN, the Sinaloa Cartel and Hamas. She came across the name of a major trafficker connected to the Assad regime in Syria making moves in the same criminal layers as Hezbollah: Antoine Kassis.

Over 18 months, Kassis used the network to move around $82.5 million in cryptocurrencies, according to evidence in court.

In September 2023, the DEA asked Selma to meet Kassis in Istanbul with two money launderers and another Colombian asset posing as an arms inspector. Kassis agreed to pay for 500 kilos of cocaine with cash and weapons. The Colombians would mark the bricks with a dragon symbol, inspired by a bracelet Kassis wore, and ship them to the Syrian port of Latakia in a container ostensibly laden with bananas.

Kassis brandished his credentials as President Assad’s cousin—which a photographed ID found on his phone after his arrest confirmed—and showed selfies posing with Syrian generals. He said he worked with the elite Syrian 4th Armored Division, commanded by the president’s brother, Maher, and that the Syrian military would secure safe passage for drugs distributed to Lebanon, Egypt and beyond. The Syrian government charged $10,000 per kilo of cocaine imported through Latakia, he said, according to court evidence.

The Assad regime and Hezbollah for years ran an industrial-scale production of captagon, a cheap amphetaminelike drug. According to court evidence, Kassis trafficked cocaine and other drugs for Hezbollah, and ran a meth lab in Papua New Guinea.

Eager to expand in Latin America and follow in the path of Monzer al-Kassar, a major Syrian arms smuggler who in 2008 was caught in a U.S. sting operation trying to sell weapons to Colombian FARC rebels, he told a friend: “I replaced Monzer,” the friend testified in court.

In the following months, the DEA arranged for more than $600,000 in cryptocurrencies to be converted into four cash deliveries in Tangier, Morocco, and Accra, Ghana, to pay boat captains and pilots for transporting drugs and arms.

Meanwhile, a rebel offensive was sweeping across Syria. In December 2024, Islamist rebels toppled President Assad. Kassis, presumably worried that the arms stockpiles would become unavailable to him, became impatient.

“I didn’t run away,” he told his Colombian partners, according to Selma’s testimony. “I have all the toys and quantities you need.”

After stalling for weeks, the DEA arranged for the Colombian posing as an ELN interlocutor to meet Kassis in Kenya to inspect the weapons. DEA agents apprehended Kassis hours after his arrival.

The DEA declined to comment.

During his defense, Kassis claimed that he didn’t know he was dealing with a terrorist organization, largely because he doesn’t speak Spanish. The court dismissed this. He faces a minimum of 20 years in prison when he is sentenced in July. The two money launderers, whose network was infiltrated, are in Colombia awaiting extradition.

The trial of Kassis is the second major one against an Assad loyalist in the U.S., and came just days after a federal court in Los Angeles convicted a former Assad prison official, Samir Ousman Alsheikh, on four counts for his involvement in the torture of prisoners at Adra Prison in Damascus, Syria.

“It is a major step towards justice and accountability for people who have lived for so long with complete impunity,” said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a U.S.-based pro-democracy organization that assisted the DEA in investigating Kassis. “It sends a powerful message of hope and justice to the Syrian people.”

Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com