Reports | 25 05 2020
The German magazine "Der Spiegel" revealed on Saturday that the Syrian regime is secretly working to build an underground complex with the aim of producing nuclear weapons.
This production facility is supposedly located in the Jbeila area near al-Qussayr—Homs, a mere two kilometers from the Lebanese border. The magazine claims to possess private and exclusive documents, satellite images, in addition to conversations obtained via international intelligence agencies.
The German magazine also confirmed that the site has been code-named "Zamzam," and that it is poised to embark on uranium enrichment activities. It also added that the Syrian regime transferred to the compound thousands of uranium bars from "al-Kibar" site that was previously destroyed by attacks attributed to the Israeli army, near Deir ez-Zor.
Der Spiegel also claimed that North Korean and Iranian experts were working on the site, with additional support from the Lebanese Hezbollah in guarding the site and securing its periphery.
The Israeli air force had previously destroyed a building in northwest Syria in September 2007, which US intelligence officials revealed was the site for Plutonium treatment. The Israeli Air Force then obliterated the "al-Kibar" site in Deir al-Zor, wiping it off the face of the earth; which helped unveil more information on the Syrian nuclear file, after the International Atomic Energy Agency's [IAEA] Board of Directors visited the Deir ez-Zor site, and information that Syria was building a nuclear facility in the region, with North Korean help.
The Financial Times, in early 2013, published information about a uranium storage facility in the "Marj Al Sultan" area in the Damascus countryside containing about 50 tons of uranium, according to Western and Israeli diplomatic sources. Whereas a study by the Institute for Science and International Security [ISIS] in February 2011, revealed the existence of three nuclear sites in Syria related to the location of "Al-Kibar" in Deir al-Zour: one in Marj al-Sultan, the other near Masyaf [in the province of Hama], and the third in Homs.
Mark Hibbs, Senior Assistant in the Nuclear Policy Program at Carnegie, said he does not have any physical evidence of the Syrian regime's possession of a nuclear weapon. Yet that "the presence of 50 tons of uranium in a storage facility in Rural Damascus is troubling—especially given the presence of Iran in the background."