Special to WorldTribune.com

LONDON — Syria was said to have renewed efforts to produce nuclear weapons and maintains a secret facility near Lebanon.

The German weekly Der Spiegel reported that President Bashar Assad has rebuilt Syria’s nuclear weapons infrastructure with help from Iran and North Korea.

Der Spiegel, citing Western intelligence assessments, said the Assad regime has received some 50 tons of uranium stored in a facility near Damascus and guarded by Hizbullah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“Syria’s dictator has not given up his dream of an atomic weapon and has apparently built a new nuclear facility at a secret location,” Der Spiegel said. “It is an extremely unsettling piece of news.”

In a report on Jan. 9, Der Spiegel said Israel’s bombing of a nuclear facility in the northern province of Dir Al Zour in 2007 failed to end Syria’s program. The German magazine said the International Atomic Energy Agency has identified the Marj A-Sultan facility 15 kilometers north of Damascus as a suspected uranium enrichment facility. So far, the Assad
regime has denied access to IAEA.

The IAEA was said to have concluded that the Assad regime stored up to 50 tons of uranium, enough for up to five nuclear bombs. Der Spiegel said some 8,000 nuclear fuel rods had been stored at Marj A-Sultan.

“Furthermore, a new reactor or an enrichment facility has very likely been built at the site — a development of incalculable geopolitical consequences,” Der Spiegel said.
IAEA was said to have been monitoring Marj A-Sultan, located near a Syrian Army base. Der Spiegel said the United Nations nuclear agency used satellites to track what was termed suspicious activity 2012 and 2013 amid nearby rebel attacks.

Der Spiegel said the Iranian-sponsored Hizbullah helped the Syrian Army relocate nuclear material from Marj A-Sultan. The material was believed to have been transferred to an underground location near Qusair along the Syrian border with Lebanon. The transfer was said to have escaped detection by Israel, Britain, France and the United States.

“The discovery of the presumed nuclear facility will not likely be welcomed by any of the political actors,” Der Spiegel said. “It is an embarrassment for everybody.”
In 2013, Hizbullah and the Syrian Army were said to have defended the border facility from rebel attacks. Der Spiegel said the Qusair facility, with six buildings as well as a conduit to a lake, could have been assigned  Hizbullah, hich coordinates with the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission.

“But the clearest proof that it is a nuclear facility comes from radio traffic recently intercepted by a network of spies,” Der Spiegel said. “A voice identified as belonging to a high-ranking Hizbullah functionary can be heard referring to the ‘atomic factory’ and mentions Qusair.”

  N. Korea, Report: Syria builds new nuke site near Lebanon with help from Iran, WorldTribune.com