‘Talmud at root of drug problems’

Zionists and the Talmud are to blame for the world’s illegal narcotics and drug addiction, Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi charged on Tuesday.

Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported that Rahimi blamed Zionists for spreading illegal narcotics and promoting addiction to them as part of a purported global plot against non-Jews prescribed in Jewish religious texts.

Speaking at a ceremony marking International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking in Tehran, Rahimi said the Talmud “teaches [the Jews] how to destroy non-Jews so as to protect an embryo in the womb of a Jewish mother.” As ostensible evidence of Jewish control of the international illegal drug trade, the vice president pointed to the absence of “a single addict among the Zionists.”

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, denounced Rahimi’s statements as “yet another example of the fact that anti-Semitism is a pillar of the Mullahocracy in Tehran.”

Rahimi also stated that the trafficking of narcotics violates Iran’s religious and ethical codes and that it is a forerunner in the fight against opiate smuggling. The CIA World Factbook notes, however, that despite Iran’s efforts, “it remains one of the primary transshipment routes for Southwest Asian heroin to Europe” and “suffers one of the highest opiate addiction rates in the world.”