Tonnes of nuclear material found at Syria site, IAEA says
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Updated / Tuesday, 18 Aug 2026<br>18:10
Getty
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, left, and Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani speaking at a joint press conference
The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog has said its inspectors have found several tons of nuclear material in Syria, at a site which the authorities said they reported to the agency last month.
Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), praised Damascus's "courageous decision" to report the undisclosed site, which dates to the Assad-era, and said the material would be put under "international safeguards".
"We are talking about a few tons of nuclear material that could be put to bad use," he said.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Mr Grossi, Syria's Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said: "On 17 July, we sent an official letter to the agency, in which we declared of our own free will the presence of nuclear materials at an undeclared site within the legacy left by the former regime."
Mr Shaibani said that "technical assessments" indicate that "these materials do not pose a risk", adding that they "will remain in Syrian national custody and subject to the agency's safeguards system".
Mr Grossi, meanwhile said "this material will be accounted for, will be put within the international safeguards system".
Syrian and IAEA experts will work together to safely store the materials, he said.
"We are starting to turn a page, and turning a page does not mean forgetting the past," he added.
Mr Grossi also visited a site in Deir Ezzor in the east, which has been shut for 18 years.
In 2018, Israel admitted carrying out a top-secret air raid against the site 11 years earlier.
In 2008, less than a year after the strike, US officials accused Syria of having sought to build a secret nuclear reactor and acknowledged that Israel had destroyed it in the raid.
The UN atomic watchdog declared in 2011 that the Syrian site was "very likely" to have been a nuclear reactor, adding that information provided to it suggested that it was being built with North Korean assistance.
"We were at the... site of Deir Ezzor, where a very comprehensive work of excavation and exploration is taking place now," Mr Grossi said.
"This is very important because, of course, this validates the longstanding evaluation of the IAEA that a nuclear facility was being built in secrecy," he added.
The watchdog said last year that it discovered uranium particles at the site during an inspection in 2024.
Mr Grossi's visit came after news outlet Axios last week quoted US and Israeli officials as saying Washington and the IAEA reached an agreement to have the watchdog remove nuclear material stored at a clandestine site in Syria after having "reached understandings with Syria and Israel".
Axios said Israel was closely monitoring a location called "Site 99", where Israeli officials say the Assad government stored nuclear material that was part of the Deir Ezzor project, also known as Al-Kibar, and that Israel threatened to bomb it.
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