The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency said that a nuclear reactor under construction in Syria during the tenure of Bashar Assad was configured to produce fissile material usable in nuclear weapons.

Rafael Grossi, at a press conference in Vienna on Monday, said: “This is a reactor that is highly efficient in the production of fissile material directly usable for building a nuclear weapon.”

Grossi added: “What matters is that these materials are now under safeguards.” According to him, inspectors, during a trip in Mordad (August), were forced to “break down the walls” and pass through “very difficult and narrow passages” to reach the hidden nuclear materials.

The reactor in question was built by North Korea in Deir ez-Zor, and Israel destroyed it in 2007 in an airstrike.