The United Nations nuclear watchdog’s Board of Governors has decided to close a long-running investigation into Syria that was launched under ousted leader Bashar al-Assad.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board adopted by consensus a resolution terminating a 2011 text that had found Syria in non-compliance with its obligations, citing cooperation from the country’s new authorities, reports AFP.
The resolution, jointly submitted by Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, encourages Syria to continue cooperating with the agency, including with ongoing excavation work at the Deir Ezzor site.
The decision comes after IAEA inspectors visited two key locations last month. One was a site in eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor that had been closed for 18 years, while the other was an undisclosed location identified to the inspectors by Syrian authorities.
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi praised Damascus for its “courageous decision” to report the undisclosed site.
Grossi said on Monday that it was “obvious that the previous government was pursuing a number of clandestine” activities.
According to Grossi, a near-complete nuclear reactor secretly constructed at Deir Ezzor during al-Assad’s rule would have been capable of producing material for nuclear weapons.
In addition to the reactor under construction, the IAEA found a fuel fabrication plant where nuclear fuel for the reactor had been manufactured, as well as a location where nuclear fuel, uranium scrap and waste had been stored.
A confidential IAEA report revealed the discovery of around 73 tonnes of natural uranium metal.
Al-Assad was ousted in December 2024, after which the current Islamist government took power and guided agency experts to key nuclear facilities.
The IAEA declared in 2011 that the Deir Ezzor site was “very likely” to have housed a nuclear reactor constructed with North Korean assistance.
In 2018, Israel acknowledged carrying out a top-secret air raid on the facility 11 years earlier. US officials had accused Syria in 2008 of attempting to build a covert reactor and acknowledged that Israel had destroyed it in the raid.
However, Robert Kelley, a former director of IAEA inspections and now an associate fellow of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said following the IAEA report that there was “no evidence of any weapons programme” in Syria.
He suggested that, before its destruction, the site may have been intended to produce plutonium for North Korea, potentially for sale to a third party.
The IAEA resolution asks the Director General to update the board, as appropriate, on the outcomes of ongoing agency activities in Syria.
