The finding that was terminated
The board of governors adopted by consensus a text stating that the 2011 resolution finding Syria in non-compliance with its obligations was terminated, noting the current government's cooperation. Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia submitted it, and the decision came after inspectors visited two sites last month, one in Deir Ezzor and a second in an undisclosed location identified to them by Syrian authorities.[1]
Two threads continue after that termination. The text encourages Syria to continue its cooperation with the agency, including the excavation work at the Deir Ezzor site, and it requests the director general to update the board, as appropriate, on the outcomes of ongoing activities. An encouragement and a request are the softest forms an institutional text can take, and neither one names a deadline.[1]
What access now rests on
With the finding gone, the file moves from a compliance instrument to a reporting relationship, and the agency's access to sites in Syria rests on the same cooperation that produced last month's visits. The other reading is that the current government has durable reasons of its own to keep inspectors coming, since it identified an undisclosed location to them, and on that reading a softer text is sufficient.[1]
The scale of what still needs verification sits in the same material. Alongside the reactor under construction at Deir Ezzor, the agency found a fuel fabrication plant where nuclear fuel for the reactor was manufactured, and a location where nuclear fuel, uranium scrap and waste were stored; a confidential report last week put the quantity at around 73 tonnes of natural uranium metal. Rafael Grossi said the near-complete reactor would have been able to produce material to make nuclear weapons, and that the previous government was pursuing a number of clandestine activities.[1]
The signal to watch
The test is the director general's next update. If that update reaches the board without naming the outcome of the excavation at Deir Ezzor, the closure will have turned verification into a reporting schedule that the agency alone paces; if it names completed work at the site, the encouragement will have functioned as an obligation.[1]