[PUBLISH.TWITTER]
The USS Tempest and USS Typhoon seized the drugs hidden aboard a stateless fishing vessel plying Mideast waters, the international task force said in a statement. The seizure took place on Monday.
The Navy said the fishing vessel likely came from Iran. All nine crew members identified themselves as Iranian nationals, according to Cmdr. Timothy Hawkins, a spokesperson for the U.S. Navy's Mideast-based 5th Fleet.
He did not elaborate on who manufactured the drugs or their ultimate destination.
As the task force ramps up regional patrols, it has confiscated illegal drugs worth over $193 million during operations at sea this year — more than the amount of drugs seized in the last four years combined, its statement said.
Heroin is trafficked to the Middle East and even Europa
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
by land from Iran
 ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites....
and Afghanistan through well-worn land routes in the Balkans, Southern Caucasus mountains or Saudi Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Fifteen of the nineteen WTC hijackers were Saudis, and most major jihadi commanders were Saudis, to include Osama bin Laden. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman quietly folded that tent in 2016, doing terrible things to the guys running it, and has since been dragging the kingdom into the current century...
, according to last year's U.N. Global Synthetic Drugs Assessment. Smugglers from Iran have increasingly taken to sea to bring heroin into South Asia, the report added, with Iranian and Pak sailors often arrested near Sri Lanka.
Iran's porous 1,923 kilometer-long (1195 mile-long) eastern border with Afghanistan, the world's largest producer of opium, has turned it into a key transit country for the illicit drug trade. 
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