Syria Really Was Building a Secret Nuclear Reactor

Nearly 20 years after Israeli jets blasted a mysterious complex in the Syrian desert, UN inspectors have finally pieced together the full story of what was being built there.

For almost two decades, the shattered ruins at Deir el-Zor sat at the centre of one of the Middle East’s most intriguing nuclear mysteries. In September 2007, Israeli warplanes swept into Syria and smashed a secretive facility deep in the country's east. Israel believed the target was a nuclear reactor, although it did not publicly acknowledge the strike until 2018. Syria insisted the site was nothing more than a conventional military facility.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had concluded as far back as 2011 that the site was “very likely” a nuclear reactor, but Syria's refusal to cooperate left major questions about the wider programme unanswered.

Now, with new access and physical evidence, those questions have finally been answered. The IAEA says Syria really was building an undeclared nuclear reactor, and it was close to completion when Israeli bombs reduced it to rubble.

The revelation becomes even more remarkable when you look at what inspectors have since uncovered. After the fall of Bashar al-Assad's government, Syria's new authorities opened sites that had long been locked away from international inspectors. At another previously undeclared site linked to the programme, investigators found approximately 73 tonnes of natural uranium metal, including around 55 tonnes already manufactured into reactor fuel. The material has now been placed under IAEA safeguards.

That is a long way from the harmless military building Damascus spent years describing. Speaking at an IAEA Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Director-General Rafael Grossi said the reactor's design could have been used to produce fissile material suitable for nuclear weapons.

In plain English, Syria was not simply pouring concrete in the desert. It was constructing a secret nuclear facility, manufacturing and storing reactor fuel and doing it outside the international safeguards system that was supposed to monitor such activity.

There was another player in the shadows too. The reactor is believed to have been built with North Korean assistance, adding Pyongyang to an already explosive mix of Syrian secrecy, Israeli air strikes and nuclear proliferation.

The IAEA has not proved that Assad had made the final decision to build a nuclear bomb. Natural uranium is not itself weapons-grade material, and inspectors have stopped short of saying Syria had crossed that line.

The reactor existed. The fuel existed. The project was real. Israel destroyed it before it became operational. Syria denied it. The site disappeared beneath dust and debris. Inspectors spent years chasing fragments, samples and suspicions.

Nearly two decades later, with Assad gone and previously sealed doors finally swinging open, the Syrian desert has surrendered its secret.