ME:
HAJI OMRAN, Iraq - Irfan kicks off his battered boots and peels away six layers of socks, revealing battered and bruised feet beneath. He and his team have walked 10 hours over snow-capped mountains to reach a smuggler's hideout in Iraq, but there is little time for rest: time is money, and a more hazardous return leg to Iran, laden with 40kg of cargo, awaits.
"Yaser, nine of Chivas and six of Grey Goose; Xerzat, nine of wine and nine of Grey Goose," says the foreman, marking each on a list as each man takes his burden on his back, and steels himself for the yomp ahead. The team has no specialist hiking equipment, and the only technology carried is a cellphone to call in their rendezvous.
As well as the elements, they face twitchy border guards, landmines, and even vicious wolves on their return journey across the 3,000m-high peaks of the Zagros mountains.
"If you reject the regime's system, you do not have any job opportunity," he says. "That's why the situation in the Kurdish areas of Iran is terrible."
As for the men who try to kill them, "Those who shoot us, are the best alcohol buyers and drinkers," he says.
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IRGC is the largest importer of booz in Iran with guys like this as the competition! Since the entire regime is a criminal enterprise, AKA a mafia-like entity, competition has little chance of long-term success.
Religious minorities (Armenians) are allowed to make small amounts for their own use, which they do and also sell covertly (Vodka), but that is nothing compared to bottles upon bottles of booz imported from abroad by the regime and their cronies.
If only 39 years ago people had kept their eyes open and not let some newbie so-called students drag iran through a huge pile of mess and then run for the borders to The states and Canada and europe to supposedly continue their "studies".
Those were the real terrorists!!