DAVOS, Switzerland — The UN nuclear watchdog is poised to return to Syria to inspect a facility damaged during the country's 13-year civil war, but unrest in the Kurdish northeast is delaying the mission, the agency's chief said.

The Al Kibar facility, located in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor region, was "very likely" a nuclear reactor built with assistance from North Korea before it was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in 2007, according to an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) assessment in 2011. The IAEA began inspections of the site in 2008, but they were halted in 2011 during Syria’s civil war. Under Syria’s new government, the IAEA resumed work on the site in 2024, but inspections have been limited recently amid an advance by government forces into areas held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

“We are aiming to return to Deir ez-Zor as soon as we can,” IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi told Al-Monitor on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, adding that it would be important to clarify the status of nuclear material “so that we can cross out Syria from the list of countries that require special consideration."

President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s administration has governed Syria since December 2024, following the ouster of long-time leader Bashar al-Assad in a swift offensive. Under Assad, the country endured a civil war from 2011 to 2024, sparked by Arab Spring protests, which were violently suppressed. The conflict caused an estimated $216 billion in infrastructure damage, according to the World Bank.