Syrian authorities announced on Tuesday that they allowed a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect a previously undisclosed site from the era of the previous regime. The director of the UN agency, Rafael Grossi, said the site contains "some tonnes" of nuclear material.
The agency team's two-day visit included two locations, one in Deir ez Zor and another containing nuclear material recently discovered by Syria, according to a joint statement. Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Asad al Shaibani said at a joint press conference with Grossi in Damascus that on 17 July Syria sent a formal letter to the agency declaring "voluntarily" the existence of nuclear material at an undisclosed site "from the legacy left by the previous regime".
Al Shaibani added that Syria invited the agency to verify the site, and that the director general and agency team "completed this morning the visit to the site and the collection of necessary samples", without specifying its geographic location. According to Al Shaibani, "technical assessments" indicate that "this material does not pose a danger", explaining that "it will remain under Syrian national custody and will be subject to the agency's safeguards system".
Grossi praised the Syrian decision, saying that "following your brave decision to inform us about a site where nuclear material was stored, we were able to access this site". He emphasised that "it is of utmost importance because we are talking about some tonnes of nuclear material that could be misused". Grossi added that "our experts will now work intensively with your experts. We have managed to access the site and inspect it, but there is still much work to be done to inventory all this material and secure it safely".
During his visit, Grossi also inspected the Al-Kibar site in Deir ez Zor province in the east of the country, which the agency suspects housed a nuclear reactor. Israel admitted in 2018 that it bombed the site in 2007, while the United States confirmed from 2008 that the attack was carried out by Israel and that the site was a secret nuclear reactor under construction. Although Damascus denied these allegations, the international agency stated in 2011 that it was "very likely" that Al-Kibar concealed a nuclear reactor under construction with North Korean assistance.
Pierre Razoux, academic director of the Mediterranean Institute of Strategic Studies, suggested that "this nuclear material, whose nature and details remain unknown, is probably related to the Syrian nuclear programme that was halted in 2007 following the Israeli bombing of Al-Kibar". Razoux also did not rule out the possibility that Syria could be harbouring material that Iraq disposed of in the early twenty-first century. According to Grossi, the agency teams are currently carrying out "large-scale excavation and exploration operations" at the Deir ez Zor site, which he considers "of critical importance because it confirms the assessment that the International Atomic Energy Agency has long held, namely that a nuclear facility was being built in secret".