UN atomic watchdog says found tons of nuclear material at Syria site

The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog said its inspectors had found several tons of nuclear material in Syria, at a site which the authorities said they reported to the agency last month.

The announcement came as Syria’s new government has pledged to cooperate with the watchdog. Syria’s top diplomat said Thursday that Damascus remains interested in developing a peaceful nuclear program and intends to keep any nuclear material in its custody under international safeguards.

Under former President Bashar al-Assad, Syria was believed to have operated an extensive undeclared nuclear program that included a nuclear reactor built by North Korea in eastern Deir al-Zor province.

Syria under Assad allowed IAEA inspectors to visit some sites, but the country under interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa has pledged full cooperation with the UN watchdog and given its inspectors access to suspected nuclear sites.

“Myself and my team, we were inside the site of Deir al-Zor, where very comprehensive work of excavation and exploration is taking place now,” the International Atomic Energy Agency’s director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi said at a news conference in Damascus.

Grossi said another site with nuclear material has also been discovered, but did not disclose any details.

Grossi said Syria’s cooperation has “enormous importance.”

“We’re talking about a few tons of nuclear material that could be put to bad use and Syria has decided to open up this site to the inspectors of the IAEA,” Grossi said. “This material will be accounted for and will be put within the international safeguard system.”

Syria under its new leadership has expressed an intention to develop nuclear energy.

The site in Deir al-Zor only became public knowledge after Israel launched airstrikes in 2007 that destroyed the facility. Syria later leveled the site and never responded fully to the IAEA’s questions about it.

However, in 2024, before Assad was deposed in December of that year, IAEA inspectors took samples at three locations and in 2025 said they had found traces of uranium at one site.

Israel is believed to be the Middle East’s only state with nuclear weapons, although it has not declared its own program.