IAEA reports Syria to the Security Council

I missed this story today: the International Atomic Energy Agency reported Syria to the Security Council. Via Reuters: The U.N. nuclear watchdog brought allegations of covert atomic work by Syria before the Security Council on Thursday, but the 15-nation body took no immediate action amid divisions among key powers. The International Atomic Energy Agency board ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

I missed this story today: the International Atomic Energy Agency reported Syria to the Security Council. Via Reuters:

I missed this story today: the International Atomic Energy Agency reported Syria to the Security Council. Via Reuters:

The U.N. nuclear watchdog brought allegations of covert atomic work by Syria before the Security Council on Thursday, but the 15-nation body took no immediate action amid divisions among key powers.

The International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors voted in June to report Syria to the council, rebuking it for stonewalling an agency probe into the Dair Alzour complex, bombed by Israel in 2007.

Western countries said Thursday’s closed-door briefing by Neville Whiting, head of the IAEA safeguards department dealing with Syria and Iran, had made clear that Syria had a secret nuclear plant. They said the council should pursue the issue, but suggested it might not discuss it again before September.

Russia and China, allies of Damascus who can veto any council action, queried whether the council should be involved, as the Syrian complex no longer exists.

It appears highly unlikely that the Council will take any action in the near future, not least because it’s probably not worth sanctioning a regime that’s on the way out.

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

Tag: Syria

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