Tag: chemical weapons

“The US and its allies have warned for years that Iran is developing pharmaceutical-based weapons in breach of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans the manufacture and use of “toxic chemicals,” defined as “chemical action on life processes [that] can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals.” Treaty signatories — including Iran — are obligated to destroy existing stockpiles.
Still, evidence suggests Iran is pursuing PBAs. “In 2014, Iran’s Chemistry Department of IHU [Imam Hossein University] sought kilogram quantities of medetomidine — a [veterinary] sedative it has researched as an aerosolized incapacitant — from Chinese exporters, according to a 2023 US State Department’s report. “The Chemistry Department has little history of veterinary or even medical research, and the quantities sought (over 10,000 effective doses) were inconsistent with the reported end use of research.”

In September 2023, Iranian anti-government hackers “posted confidential documents detailing an Iranian military university’s development of grenades meant to disseminate medetomidine,” the State Department said.

Of particular concern were references in Iranian literature to the 2002 Dubrovka incident, when Russian security forces pumped pharmaceutical-based gas — probably fentanyl or carfentanyl, another synthetic opioid vastly more potent — into a crowded Moscow theater to subdue Chechen rebels who had taken almost a thousand hostages. Commandos then stormed the building and killed the incapacitated rebels — but the gas also killed more than 130 hostages.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/iran-developed-fentanyl-based-chemical-101201210.html