Description: IAEA Director General, Rafael Grossi, had stated that inspectors pertaining to the atomic agency found reliable evidence in Syria’s formerly suspected nuclear reactor, located in Deir El – Zour, to have been used for weaponization of nuclear power. Grossi confirmed the information after the current regime under President Ahmed Al Sharaa, allowed IAEA back into the country having been previously banned by the former President Bashar Al – Assad. The industrially modified particles sampled at the site, indicated that the former regime was progressively working towards building a nuclear weapon as the evidence suggested. The site was known to have been previously bombed by Israel in 2006 and immediately leveled by Syria without offering any information regarding its strategic value. Israel has also intensified infrastructure work at the Simon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center as satellite images have suggested that the Israelis were either building capacities for developing more nuclear warheads or intensifying construction around the controversial Dimona nuclear site and its heavy water reactor. Israel is suspected of having around 90 nuclear warheads at Dimona and is not a signatory to the nuclear non – proliferation treaty while also prohibiting IAEA inspections in the country. Another report from the IAEA also indicated that Iran prior to the joint US – Israeli attacks in Jun, had enriched uranium to weapons grade levels as plenty of the material was declared missing after the 12 – Day War.
Impact: The crisis in the Middle East has been significantly aggravated by new information emerging from the IAEA as suspected evidence of Syria’s former nuclear development, Israel’s intensification of infrastructure work at their suspected nuclear site and Iran’s unaccounted stockpiles of enriched uranium constitute a major factor for instability. Syria has been struggling to form a wider coalition between the ethnically and religiously diverse militants within its own borders with violence erupting regularly in the southern region where Israel had also intervened militarily. Iran has been combating pressure from international sanctions and restitution of its military and defensive capacities, while elevating hostile rhetoric towards the US and Israel. Security and military hotbeds such as the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Syria’s southern provinces and the entirety of Iran would remain considerably unstable with regional tensions gradually escalating. The possibility of a renewed conflict between Israel and Iran as well as sectarian violence in the southern parts of Syria remains highly probable.