[5] Syria sought to develop nuclear weapons with help from North Korea, but its plutonium production reactor was destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in 2007 (see Operation Orchard).

[9] Despite the fact that Syrian officials did not explicitly declare the chemical weapons capability, they implied it through speeches and in addition warned of retaliations.

[16] On 16 October 2013, the OPCW and the United Nations formally established a joint mission to oversee the elimination of the Syrian chemical weapons program by mid-2014, which was declared completed in January 2016.

A Syrian military source told SANA, the official news agency in Syria, that the Syrian Army seized two containers with sarin together with automatic rifles, pistols and homemade bombs (IEDs) in a rebel hideout in the al-Faraieh neighborhood (also spelled Al-Faraya)[22] of the city of Hama on 1 June 2013,[23][24] which has been the scene of fighting between government troops and armed opposition groups.

[citation needed] The Syrian government declared the two cylinders "as abandoned chemical weapons" and told the OPCW that "the items did not belong to" them.

[25] In December 2013 investigative journalist Seymour Hersh controversially reported that multiple U.S. intelligence agencies had allegedly produced top secret assessments in the summer of 2013, regarding Syrian rebel's supposed chemical weapons capabilities.

The alleged assessments were said by Hersh to have concluded that the Al-Nusra Front and Al-Qaeda in Iraq were capable of acquiring, producing, and deploying sarin gas "in quantity".

"[27] On 8 April 2016, a spokesman for the rebel group said that "weapons not authorized for use in these types of confrontations" had been used against Kurdish militia and civilians in the Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood in Aleppo.

Syria had open and IAEA monitored nuclear research programs including a Chinese made non-reactor miniature neutron source.

[48] On 24 October 2007 the Institute for Science and International Security released a report which identified a site in eastern Syria's Deir ez-Zor Governorate province as the suspected reactor.

The report speculated about similarities between the Syrian building and North Korea's Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, but said that it was too early to make a definitive comparison.

[56] Joseph Cirincione, an expert on nuclear proliferation and head of the Washington-based Ploughshares Fund, commented "we should learn first from the past and be very cautious about any intelligence from the US about other country's weapons.

[58] IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei criticized the strikes and deplored that information regarding the matter had not been shared with his agency earlier.

[41] Syria has declined to let the IAEA visit other military sites the United States recently made allegations about, arguing it fears that too much openness on its part would encourage the U.S. to push for years of relentless international scrutiny.

[64] After refusing to comment on the reports for six months, the Bush administration briefed Congress and the IAEA on 24 April 2008, saying that the U.S. Government was "convinced" that Syria had been building a "covert nuclear reactor" that was "not intended for peaceful purposes.

[67] Syria allowed an IAEA visit to the site on 23 June 2008, which took environmental samples that revealed the presence of man-made uranium and other materials consistent with a reactor.

A 2009 IAEA investigation reported evidence of uranium and graphite and concluded that the site bore features resembling an undeclared nuclear reactor.

[70] On 24 May 2011, IAEA Director General Amano released a report concluding that the destroyed building was "very likely" a nuclear reactor, which Syria had been required to declare under its NPT safeguards agreement.

[72][73] The U.S. National Air and Space Intelligence Center reported in 2009 that Syria possessed road-mobile Scud-D and Tochka missiles, with fewer than 100 launchers.

United States diplomatic cables revealed that two Indian firms aided Syrian chemical and biological weapon makers in trying to obtain Australia Group-controlled equipment.

[11] In November 2014, the anti-government Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that five nuclear scientists, one of which that was Iranian national, were assassinated by a gunman in Damascus.