A member of Syrian government forces, stands guard the Abu Duhur military air base area in Idlib province, on Jan. 21, 2018. (Credit: George Ourfalian / AFP)
Nuclear material discovered at an undisclosed site in Syria is not dangerous and will remain under Syrian custody, subject to safeguards by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Syrian Foreign Minister Assaad al-Shaibani said Tuesday.
Speaking at a joint press conference in Damascus with IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, he added that Syria had the right to use the material for civilian and peaceful purposes. “On July 17, we sent an official letter to the agency, in which we voluntarily declared the presence of nuclear material at an undeclared site, part of the legacy left by the former regime,” Shaibani said. Grossi “and the agency’s team completed their visit to the site this morning and collected the necessary samples,” he added.
“Based on technical assessments, this material poses no risk,” the Syrian minister said. “It will remain under Syrian custody while being subject to the agency’s safeguards system,” he added.
Grossi, for his part, said the material amounted to “a few tons of nuclear material” that would be placed under “international supervision.” He confirmed that the agency had gained access to the site after being notified by the Syrian government. “After your courageous decision to inform us of the existence of a site where nuclear material had been stored, we were able to access the location,” he said. “We are talking about a few tons of nuclear material that could potentially be misused.” Syrian experts will work with those from the U.N. agency to ensure the material is stored securely, he added.
Grossi subsequently visited a site in Deir Ezzor, eastern Syria, which the agency suspects once housed a nuclear reactor. The IAEA said last year that it had detected uranium particles at the site during an inspection in 2024. Israel acknowledged in 2018 that it had carried out a secret airstrike there 11 years earlier against what it described as a “nuclear reactor under construction.” “Extensive excavation and exploration work is currently underway” at the site, Grossi said. “This is very important because it confirms the IAEA’s longstanding assessment that a nuclear facility was being secretly constructed,” he added.
Grossi’s visit came after the U.S. news site Axios reported last week, citing U.S. and Israeli officials, that Washington and the IAEA had reached an agreement for the agency to remove nuclear material stored at a clandestine site in Syria, after “finding common ground with Syria and Israel.” According to the report, Israel was closely monitoring a location known as “Site 99,” which Israeli authorities identify as the site where the Assad regime stored nuclear material linked to the Deir Ezzor project, and had threatened to bomb it.
Since former President Bashar al-Assad fled the country in late 2024, Syria’s new authorities have pledged to cooperate with the U.N. nuclear watchdog in addressing the legacy of nuclear activities carried out during the Assad family’s decades in power. Syria is not known to possess operational nuclear material as part of a weapons program.
