A nearly complete nuclear reactor built in secret during the rule of ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad could have produced fissile material for possible use in nuclear weapons, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog has revealed. Last month inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited two sites, one in Deir ez-Zor and another at an undisclosed location identified to them by Syrian authorities. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said on Monday that it was “Evidently that the previous government was carrying out a series of clandestine activities.” “They didn’t want the world to know what they were doing,” he told reporters after opening the quarterly meeting of the Vienna-based agency’s board of governors. “Given the configuration, the technical characteristics of that type of reactor, this is a reactor that is very efficient in producing fissile material that could be used directly for the manufacture of nuclear weapons,” he said, adding that building the reactor was “very important.” step.” Syria was believed to have operated an extensive undeclared nuclear program under Assad that included a nuclear reactor built by North Korea in the eastern province of Deir ez-Zor. After Assad was overthrown in December 2024, the new government agreed to give IAEA inspectors access to suspected former nuclear sites. During a visit to Syria in August, IAEA inspectors confirmed that “the cooling infrastructure that has now been discovered is consistent with that of a reactor nuclear.” Grossi and a team of senior inspectors also visited a previously undeclared site in the country. In 2018, Israel admitted to carrying out a top-secret airstrike on the site 11 years earlier. In 2008, less than a year after the attack, US officials accused Syria of trying to build a secret nuclear reactor and acknowledged that Israel had destroyed it in the attack. Syria’s eastern desert, according to the narrated video. Photo: APSyria notified the agency existence of the site in a July 17 letter and invited the IAEA “to cooperate with the Syrian authorities in the inspection and verification of the site and any nuclear material that may be found.” The IAEA said in its confidential report distributed to member states last Tuesday and seen by the Associated Press that this new site contained “natural metallic uranium in the form of clad fuel rods.” Inspectors visited the site in August had to “tear down walls” and go through “very difficult and narrow corridors” to reach the nuclear material that had been hidden. The site had boxes scattered throughout the site, he said. “The important thing is that this material is now under safeguards” by the IAEA, adding that the agency’s inspectors had managed to install cameras at the site. the Syrian government will have to decide.” He added: “We are not asking them to do this or that. For us, the important thing is that we know where this is at all times.” [material] it’s every last gram.” Logan Mintz, director of nuclear materials security at the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, said natural uranium metal was not directly usable for a nuclear weapon, but could be “diverted to a covert weapons program that further processes it into plutonium for a nuclear weapon.” He said that once it is deemed safe to move, the material could be “transported in certified containers” to a third country that could “safely dispose of it in a chemically more stable and more widely used” for possible use in nuclear power plants. “As with any transport of nuclear material, this movement would require robust security against theft or sabotage,” he said. The Associated Press and Agence France-Press contributed to the report.
