The captagon trade has spread from Syria to Yemen, bankrolling Houthi terrorism. Washington should pay attention.
The ouster of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria left a void in the regional narcotics trade. But the exile of the king of captagon has not led to the end of the drug itself, nor its manufacture, or supply. And certainly not the demand.
It is an opportunity that Yemen’s Houthis—never ones to pass on a profitable scheme—are eager to exploit. The group has a long history of growing and selling khat, a stimulant popular in Yemen. Now, the Iran-backed terrorists are moving into the illicit captagon business, which long helped prop up Syria’s former dictator.
Yemen’s internationally recognized government recently seized 1.5 million captagon pills en route to Saudi Arabia from Houthi-controlled territory. Prices in Saudi Arabia reportedly range from $6 to $27 a pill for the amphetamine-like drug. Busts continued throughout July, with Yemeni authorities intercepting tens of thousands more pills in multiple operations.
As captagon labs have become less ubiquitous in Syria, the Houthis are producing the drug in Yemen themselves. Yemen’s long and relatively porous border with Saudi Arabia gives the Houthis access to a large consumer market for captagon and other drugs. The Houthis can use the proceeds from these sales to acquire missiles and other munitions to hurl at Israel and its allies, US outposts included.
Clearly, captagon commerce is alive and well, and the United States still has a role to play in countering the regional narco-trade, which has come to span far beyond the Middle East region. One of the largest captagon seizures on record occurred in Italy, where authorities seized 84 million captagon pills worth approximately $1.1 billion at the Port of Salerno in 2020.
Captagon has yet to arrive on American shores, but the United States is not out of reach. Global drug networks connect the Middle East and the West. Earlier this month, Emirati authorities seized 131 kilograms of unidentified narcotics and psychotropic substances trafficked to the United Arab Emirates from Canada through Spain.
Washington was making good progress countering the regional narco-trade in the months leading up to Hamas’s October 7, 2023, assault on Israel. The Biden administration issued multiple rounds of captagon-related sanctions and released a congressionally mandated strategy to “disrupt and dismantle” Assad-linked narcotics networks. The effort slowed as the war in Gaza raged on, although the US Treasury Department announced sanctions on a handful of captagon traffickers in October 2024.
Now there’s evidence to suggest that Yemen may become a new center for captagon production. While captagon seizures in Yemen remain a fraction of those in other parts of the Middle East, the Houthis are seeking to increase their market share.
In 2023, Asharq al-Awsat reported that the Yemeni terrorist group acquired materials for a captagon production facility. At the end of June 2025, Major General Mutahhar al-Shuaibi, the director of security in Aden, the interim capital of the legitimate government of Yemen, announced that the Houthis had established a captagon production facility in their territory. Moammar al-Eryani, Yemen’s minister of information, added that this was done in coordination with the regime in Iran.
And Assad’s ouster does not mean that Washington can relieve pressure on Syria, either. Despite new leader Ahmad al-Shara’s pledge to “purify” Syria, captagon continues to flow through the country to Jordan and the Persian Gulf.
In the months since Assad’s fall, the Trump administration has been keen to welcome Syria back into the international fold. On June 30, President Donald Trump issued an executive order lifting sanctions on Syria. The executive order left sanctions on “Bashar al-Assad and his associates, human rights abusers, captagon traffickers,” and others in place, but passive adherence to old measures is not enough.
As the recent seizures in Yemen suggest, the world’s captagon trade did not come and go with Bashar al-Assad. Washington must monitor the potential rise of new production hubs in Yemen, while also recognizing that narcotics networks in Syria and Lebanon remain active. Policymakers can continue to hold narcotraffickers accountable by rolling out new sanctions and drawing on the prescriptions identified in the Biden administration’s interagency strategy.
Without updated and ongoing action from Washington, the captagon trade will persist even if its key players change.
About the Authors: Natalie Ecanow and Bridget Toomey
Natalie Ecanow is a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Follow Natalie on X: @NatalieEcanow.
Bridget Toomey is a research analyst at FDD. and Bridget on X: @BridgetKToomey.
Image: Akramalrasy / Shutterstock.com.
