For nearly two decades, a secret burned beneath the Syrian desert — a nuclear reactor built in Deir Az Zor, bombed by Israel in 2007, then buried and denied by a government determined to erase the evidence. Now, following the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, the IAEA has confirmed what long lingered as suspicion: Syria constructed and concealed a functional nuclear facility, along with fuel fabrication infrastructure and 73 tonnes of undeclared uranium. The disclosure marks one of the most significant revelations in nuclear non-proliferation history, and opens a fragile new chapter in