Global Security Newswire

Analysts said the International Atomic Energy Agency might opt against invoking its right to inspect the site of a suspected former Syrian nuclear reactor, Reuters reported yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 23).

The U.N. nuclear watchdog in a recent report indicated Damascus has continued to block requests to inspect the Dair Alzour site, where a suspected nuclear reactor was destroyed in a 2007 Israeli airstrike. Monitors were barred from the area after a June 2008 visit turned up traces of anthropogenic natural uranium. Syria has dismissed suggestions it has engaged in illicit atomic activities.

The United States has encouraged the Vienna-based nuclear agency to seek access to the site through a "special inspection," under which IAEA officials are entitled to check any location in a member nation with little prior warning.

The agency, though, could avoid pursuing such an inspection to avoid antagonizing Syria amid an ongoing international dispute over Iran's nuclear work, according to Reuters (see related GSN story, today). In addition, a special inspection would offer the U.N. office little recourse beyond capitulation or further escalation of the standoff if Syria still refused to permit investigators at the site.

"Syria is winning its battle with the IAEA over safeguards compliance," Mark Hibbs, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in an analysis last week. "Fearing a confrontation, Amano is not willing to request from Damascus a special inspection to probe allegations raised by Western states and Israel that Syria built a clandestine reactor."

"The U.S. and other Western states are getting increasingly concerned that time is running out on the IAEA in Syria," he added, noting that evidence of nuclear activity at Dair Alzour would disappear with time.

Shannon Kile, an expert with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, called the Syrian dispute "a case which really calls out for a special inspection." Findings from the site suggest Damascus might have violated international obligations, he said.

Addressing suspicions that North Korea has furnished sensitive atomic technologies to Syria, Kile said, "I think that for many ... is really a red line."

"We're likely to see a continued stalemate, with associated low-level tension at the [IAEA governing board], for some time to come," said Andreas Persbo, head of the London-based Verification Research, Training and Information Center (Fredrik Dahl, Reuters, Oct. 13).