IAEA says Assad-era secret reactor in Syria was configured to produce nuclear weapons fuel

IAEA director general Rafael Grossi said a nuclear reactor built by North Korea in Syria's Deir Ez Zor province, and long denied by the Assad government, was configured to produce fissile material usable directly in weapons. Inspectors had to break through walls and navigate narrow hidden passages to reach the site during an August visit, arranged after Syria's post-Assad government granted access. Israel bombed the reactor in 2007; Syria bulldozed the site afterwards and never fully accounted for it to the IAEA.

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