Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa attends the Ministry of Awqaf conference titled “Unity of Islamic Discourse” at the Conference Palace in Damascus, Syria, Feb. 16, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

“We are now turning a page … Turning a page does not mean forgetting the past; it means just the opposite — which is confronting it, confronting it with eyes wide open,” declared Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog. Grossi spoke on Aug. 18 at a joint press conference with Syria’s foreign minister after a historic IAEA visit to former Syrian nuclear sites — access made possible by the new Syrian authorities in Damascus. 

In July, the Syrian government became aware of stocks of nuclear and nuclear-related materials — natural uranium metal and graphite related to operating a covert North Korean-built reactor — two-decade-old remnants of the Bashar al-Assad regime’s secret proliferation program. While the new government has agreed to place the materials under IAEA safeguards, it has not authorized their export for secure storage by the agency or another country and seeks to instead retain the materials for a civil nuclear program.  

That the material will now fall under safeguards is welcome — and required for some of them under Syria’s IAEA safeguards agreement. Yet the decision to keep them on Syrian soil raises concerns about the risk of diversion into the wrong hands and about Damascus’s intentions. Syria has no current need for these materials given its existing nuclear capabilities, and its unstable security situation creates a military risk to any new nuclear reactors. Turkey’s role in bringing the current Syrian regime to power, along with its malign activities in the region — including its active presence in Syria, past statements about acquiring nuclear weapons, and apparent interest in helping the Syrian government get hold of the materials — further heighten worries that Ankara may seek them to advance its own proliferation aims. 

What the IAEA Found in Syria

Riveting video and photos from the IAEA’s visit were a throwback to the past. They captured Grossi and his team exploring the site of a 2007 Israeli airstrike on Al-Kibar, a covert North Korean-built reactor in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor region — an operation Israel later acknowledged as “Operation Orchard” or “Outside the Box.” 

Jerusalem, long determined to block additional nuclear-weapons states in the region (destroying an Iraqi reactor in 1981 and, alongside the United States, striking numerous Iranian nuclear facilities in 2025 and 2026), hit the Syrian reactor just prior to start-up. The strike denied the Assad regime a ready source of plutonium for nuclear bombs. Yet nearly two decades later, the associated inventories, equipment, facilities, and full extent of North Korean assistance remain under active IAEA investigation. 

Fresh progress came when Syria secretly declared to the IAEA in mid-July several tons of natural uranium metal — material that the Assad regime had been converting into reactor fuel or that had already reached a more finished form. That declaration was required under Syria’s existing safeguards agreement with the IAEA. Damascus also disclosed a stock of graphite — the moderator material that slows down fast-moving neutrons, enabling them to sustain fission chain reactions more efficiently in a reactor core — intended for the now-defunct reactor. The IAEA visited these sites and is overseeing excavation at the reactor complex itself, likely searching for buried remnants and evidence of remaining natural-uranium metal fuel of the kind the agency first detected after the Assad regime allowed a sole inspection in 2008. Open questions persist about past North Korean help with plutonium separation — the step needed to extract weapons-usable material from any plutonium the reactor might have produced — and about any planned uranium-enrichment or weaponization assistance.

In 2024, the Assad regime permitted an IAEA visit to another related suspect site, Marj as-Sultan, linked to uranium processing for the reactor; inspectors found uranium particles that further confirmed its role in the clandestine program. After Assad’s fall in December 2024, the new Syrian authorities granted additional access. 

An Axios report on Aug. 10 also described a facility long watched by Israel and known as “Site 99.” Under a US-brokered understanding, Syria reportedly agreed to the eventual export of uranium yellowcake and other residual materials stored there after Israel warned the United States it would strike if the material remained, due to the risk of it falling out of control. Whether Site 99 is newly discovered or connected to the sites the IAEA just visited, and whether its contents form part of a separate export arrangement, is still unclear.

Trouble Ahead?

While the Syrian move to place material under safeguards is positive — and more details will emerge when the IAEA issues its next Syria report ahead of next month’s Board of Governors meeting — Damascus has no current technical need for the materials it plans to keep in-country. Natural uranium metal and graphite are unnecessary to operate its sole research reactor, the Chinese-supplied Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR), which runs on small quantities of highly enriched uranium fuel that can last up to a decade (a nagging proliferation concern in its own right). Syria retains no known conversion, enrichment, or fuel-fabrication capabilities to convert natural uranium metal for another reactor. 

Keeping material or fuel without a matching reactor raises immediate questions about Syria’s ultimate intentions for its nuclear program. The past Syrian program’s suspect capabilities could also spill over into new activities if that file is not first resolved. It is also likely that any new capabilities would pose an intolerable proliferation threat to Israel, prompting additional military action against Syria.

Syria has also not yet demonstrated the transparency and strategic independence required to manage proliferation-sensitive nuclear capabilities. Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa is the former leader of al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, and much of the country’s current political and security leadership emerged from that same camp. That history does not, on its own, prove that the current government would pursue nuclear weapons. Still, it creates a high burden of proof before Damascus should be entrusted with a nuclear program.

Syria’s security apparatus is composed of many extremists, including former jihadists and ISIS recruits who, according to the United Nations, have infiltrated the army, as well as individuals who have participated in massacres against ethnic minorities. Because of the nature of this apparatus, Damascus has continued to face problems establishing reliable command and control; the existence of a formal security structure does not necessarily mean the central government exercises effective control over all its personnel or territory. For example, despite the integration of foreign jihadist fighters and other factional commanders into the armed forces, many of these factions remain loyal to their division commanders — who have led them since the Syrian civil war — rather than to the formal military hierarchy. Additionally, the government has faced difficulties imposing central authority in areas across Syria, most notably in the Druze-majority province of Suwayda. 

These factors heighten risk that the material could fall into the hands of extremists. Moreover, any new reactor on Syrian soil would also likely create a risk of radioactive hazard if caught in military crossfire.

Turkey Plays a Role in the Story

Finally, there is the question of Turkey, including an alleged interest in helping Syria access yellowcake at Site 99 and Ankara’s own reported pursuit of uranium stocks — despite lacking a known conversion or enrichment capacity — through a mining agreement with military-ruled Niger. Ankara’s potential access to Syrian nuclear materials deserves scrutiny because Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has periodically raised the prospect of acquiring a nuclear deterrent. 

In 2019, Erdogan publicly complained that nuclear-armed countries tell Turkey that it cannot possess nuclear weapons, saying that he could not accept such a restriction. More recently, in February 2026, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said that Turkey “may inevitably have to join the same race” if regional nuclear proliferation accelerated. 

Since the fall of the Assad regime — enabled by Turkey — Syria has moved rapidly closer to Turkey’s strategic orbit. Ankara provides Damascus with military assistance, training, and political support; Turkey maintains a military presence in northern Syria; and former Turkish-backed factions and commanders have been incorporated into the new Syrian armed forces. Since the fall of the Assad regime, Israel has expressed growing concern over potential Turkish entrenchment in Syria, particularly given Ankara’s support for Hamas and its increasingly hostile rhetoric toward Israel. Israel has acted against potential points of Turkish military entrenchment on at least two occasions: first in April 2025, targeting the T4 airbase in central Syria, and again last week, when it struck the Abu Duhur airbase amid concerns that Turkey was preparing to deploy forces and a radar system there.

Therefore, Syrian possession of nuclear material or additional nuclear capabilities could mean eventual Turkish acquisition of them.

Writing a Positive Next Chapter

To ensure Syria writes a positive new chapter free of nuclear proliferation, the United States should insist that Damascus turn over its nuclear materials and pursue no further reactors or civil nuclear activities beyond limited medical, agricultural, and research uses. Syria should also fully cooperate with the IAEA’s investigation into the Assad regime’s nuclear activities, which could require months of inspections and interviews with former regime personnel.

Positively, Syria is cooperating on eradicating the country’s chemical weapons legacy assets and capabilities and working with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to verifiably account for and dismantle that program. To make clear it is serious about nuclear nonproliferation, it should implement the IAEA’s enhanced inspection agreement, the Additional Protocol (AP). The Assad regime was unwilling to sign the AP, likely to limit IAEA inspection rights to undeclared nuclear sites and activities.

Syria’s new authorities face a long legacy of Assad-era malfeasance that they must address and correct. Advancing new nuclear activities would immediately heighten tensions with neighbors and the West. If Damascus seeks the world’s confidence, it must first verifiably resolve all outstanding issues from its proliferation past.    

Andrea Stricker is deputy director of the nonproliferation program and a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Ahmad Sharawi is a research analyst focusing on Middle East affairs, specifically the Levant, Iraq, and Iranian intervention in Arab affairs, as well as US foreign policy toward the region. 

Follow Andrea and Ahmad on X @StrickerNonpro and @AhmadA_Sharawi. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.