Nuclear material found in Syria will remain in the country, minister says

Nuclear material found at an undisclosed site in Syria is not dangerous and will remain in Syrian custody, subject to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s guarantees, Syria’s foreign minister says.

Asaad al-Shibani adds in a joint press conference with IAEA chief Rafael Grossi in Damascus that Syria has the right to use the material for civil and peaceful purposes.

Since the ouster of president Bashar al-Assad in late 2024, Syria’s new authorities have committed to working with the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog to address the legacy of nuclear activities during decades of Assad family rule.

Grossi says the agency was able to access the site after the Syrian government notified it.

Grossi adds that his agency had found several tons of nuclear materials at a previously undeclared site dating from the rule of Syria’s previous authorities.

“After your courageous decision to inform us that there was another place, another site where nuclear material had been stored, we were able to access this place… we are talking about a few tons of nuclear material that could be put to bad use,” he says.

Syria is not known to hold operational stockpiles of nuclear material for a weapons program, but Israel bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 in the country’s eastern province of Deir Ezzor.