nuclear-news

Syria agrees to surrender Assad-era nuclear material to IAEA

Matthew Hoare Absi Smeisem, Damascus, 11 August, 2026

Syria has agreed to surrender its remaining stockpile of nuclear material to the UN’s atomic watchdog, but the breakthrough is unlikely to bring Damascus and Israel any closer to a security agreement, a senior Syria analyst told The New Arab, as negotiations remain stalled over Israeli occupation and withdrawal demands.

“The legacy reactor residue unlocks none of that,” Nanar Hawach, senior Syria analyst at the International Crisis Group, told TNA, saying the nuclear file was largely separate from the disputes that have frustrated US attempts to broker an agreement between the two countries.

The assessment comes after US and Israeli officials told Axios that Syria had agreed to hand the material over to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) under a US-brokered deal reached several weeks ago, following weeks of Israeli threats to bomb Syrian facilities.

The Trump administration and the IAEA had raced to secure the material amid concerns that the issue could provoke a new crisis involving Israel, Syria and potentially Turkey.

The stockpile is a remnant of a secret nuclear programme pursued under the Assad regime more than two decades ago. The material was reportedly connected to the Al-Kibar nuclear reactor in Deir Ezzor governorate, which Israel destroyed in 2007, although several storage and research and development sites remained intact.

A US official said the material included powdered uranium ore known as yellowcake, which can be enriched as part of the process of producing nuclear fuel or weapons and could also potentially be used in a “dirty bomb”.

Six months after Bashar al-Assad’s overthrow, Syria’s new government agreed to give the IAEA unrestricted access to the facility and several other sites connected to the former government’s nuclear programme.

But Israeli officials later said they had detected possible attempts by Syria’s new authorities to access material at a facility known as Site 99 and suspected they were receiving assistance from Turkey………………………………………………………………………..https://www.newarab.com/news/syria-agrees-surrender-assad-era-nuclear-material-iaea

August 15, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, Syria, Uranium