The Syrian regime of Al-Qaeda linked President Ahmed Sharaa continues its remarkable degree of cooperation with the so-called international community, this week affirming that it will give inspectors from the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, immediate and unprecedented access to the country.
While not known for nuclear sites, it's long been suspected that Damascus was overseeing a nascent program under the prior Assad government. This included an undeclared nuclear reactor built by North Korea in eastern Deir el-Zour province, which was attacked by Israeli jets in a September 2007 raid. That operation had remained a secret for years after.
The IAEA previously described the reactor as being "not configured to produce electricity" - which raised suspicions in the West and in the region that Assad had been seeking nuclear weapons.
The UN watchdog's aim is "to bring total clarity over certain activities that took place in the past that were, in the judgment of the agency, probably related to nuclear weapons," IAEA director-general, Rafael Grossi, has said.
Grossi further said the new government run by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (which when it began fighting Assad years ago was an al-Qaeda affiliate) remains "committed to opening up to the world, to international cooperation."
Interestingly, even the Jewish News Syndicate identifies the terror pedigree of the man now running things in Damascus:
The IAEA leader told the AP that al-Sharaa — a former al-Qaida member who has courted Western governments since seizing power in December — had shown a "very positive disposition to talk to us and to allow us to carry out the activities we need to."
Now that Assad is out, and Sharaa (aka. Jolani) is in, delegations from Western capitals have rushed back to Damascus, and Washington has even lifted sanctions.
Syria under Sharaa has gone so far as to signaled openness to normalizing relations with Israel, after the two had been in a permanent state of war for decades under the Assad family.
But after Syria fell to the Sunni jihadists, this meant Iran lost a crucial ally in a strategic location - the so-called 'Shia crescent' - that linked Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, and Tehran.
UN inspectors will likely eventually also want to inspect Syria's chemical weapons sites, though Israel had long ago bombed many of them, yet there probably remains underground stockpiles.