IAEA VERIFIES TONS OF UNDECLARED NUCLEAR MATERIAL IN SYRIA IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi says

IAEA VERIFIES TONS OF UNDECLARED NUCLEAR MATERIAL IN SYRIA

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi says inspectors are verifying “a few tons of nuclear material that could be put to bad use” at a previously undeclared site dating to the Assad era.

The material was disclosed to the IAEA by Syria’s new government and will now be accounted for and placed under international safeguards.

The concern is not merely the existence of the material, but the danger of diversion, misuse, or loss of control over nuclear material that had remained outside international safeguards.

Grossi also visited the Deir Ezzor site, where Israel destroyed a suspected nuclear reactor in 2007. He said new excavation work “validates the longstanding evaluation of the IAEA that a nuclear facility was being built in secrecy.”

The Assad regime’s clandestine nuclear activities are now being uncovered piece by piece.