Inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) suspect that more than 100 chemical weapons-related sites remain active or unaccounted for across Syria, following the fall of former President Bashar Assad. This figure casts doubt on the accuracy of the numbers previously acknowledged by the former Syrian government.
This is the first such estimate since the fall of the Assad regime on December 8, 2024, as the OPCW now seeks to reenter Syria and assess what remains of Assad’s notorious military chemical program. The number far exceeds any figure ever admitted by the former regime.
According to the OPCW, the new estimate is based on intelligence gathered from external researchers, nonprofit organizations, and intelligence-sharing among member states. The suspected sites are believed to have been used for chemical weapons research, manufacturing, and storage.
During the civil war, the Assad regime employed chemical weapons, including sarin and chlorine gas, against opposition fighters and Syrian civilians. Some of the remaining sites are likely hidden in caves or remote locations, making satellite detection difficult, according to former OPCW staff and independent experts. This raises concerns about the possibly unsecured state of some stockpiles.
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Former Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad and President Vladimir Putin during their meeting in Damascus early in 2020
(Photo: AP)
Syria joined the OPCW under Assad in 2013 as part of a US-Russian brokered deal following a sarin gas attack that killed hundreds. Yet OPCW inspectors have long faced obstruction by Syrian officials, and the true number and status of Syria’s chemical weapons facilities remained unclear even after Assad’s fall.
In the early years of the civil war, Assad’s government disclosed only 27 chemical weapons sites to the OPCW, which were subsequently inspected and decommissioned. However, the regime continued using chemical agents until at least 2018, and research shows it kept importing critical chemical precursors despite sanctions.
Inspectors have warned that these weapons pose extreme dangers, especially in densely populated areas. Sarin, a nerve agent, can kill within minutes. Chlorine and mustard gas, both notoriously used in World War I, can cause severe burns, blindness, and respiratory failure.
In a surprise visit to OPCW headquarters in The Hague this March, Syria’s new foreign minister, Asaad al-Shibani, announced that the current government plans to destroy any remnants of the chemical weapons program developed under Assad’s regime and would fully comply with international law. The government already allowed OPCW teams into the country last month to begin documenting the sites, according to sources familiar with the matter.
However, Syria has yet to appoint an ambassador to the OPCW, a key diplomatic step seen as a sign of commitment to resolving the issue.
As Washington urges Syria to facilitate the OPCW’s mission, a senior official in the Syrian Foreign Ministry said that the US had presented Damascus with a list of conditions in exchange for partial sanctions relief, including cooperation on chemical weapons disarmament.
The list was reportedly handed over by U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Levant and Syria Natasha Franceschi to al-Shibani during a private meeting on the sidelines of the Syria Donors Conference in Brussels on March 18. The meeting, which had not been previously disclosed, marks the first high-level contact between Damascus and Washington since President Donald Trump took office on January 20, 2025.
Former Syrian parliamentarian Mohammad al-Homsi said that “the United States has already started working on dismantling the remaining chemical weapons in Syria,” coinciding with Israeli airstrikes on various locations across the country.
Washington is also coordinating with several Middle Eastern states to prevent remnants of the former regime’s chemical weapons from falling into the wrong hands.
Ayman Abdel Nour, a Washington-based Syrian political analyst, said: “The U.S. and its allies are concerned that the collapse of the regime’s military and security infrastructure and the growing chaos could lead to dangerous weapons being seized by unauthorized actors, which requires swift international action.”
Questions continue to swirl around the history of Syria’s chemical weapons program. Retired Syrian Air Force Colonel Khaled Mansour says that Syria first began pursuing chemical weapons in 1971. That year, Dr. Abdullah Wathiq Shahid, a nuclear physicist and senior adviser to former President Assad, founded the Scientific Studies and Research Center, which focused on chemical defense systems with Soviet support, including acquiring 11,000 protective gas masks from China.
U.S. sources indicate that Syria obtained a small stockpile of chemical weapons from Egypt prior to the 1973 Yom Kippur War. However, the Syrian military never deployed these weapons against Israel or other enemies. They were apparently reserved for worst-case scenarios involving military collapse. But after Egypt signed the Camp David peace accords with Israel in the late 1970s and particularly after Syria’s devastating losses to Israel in Lebanon in 1982, as well as tensions with the Soviet Union during the Iran-Iraq War, Damascus felt increasingly isolated. This drove the Assad regime to further invest in chemical weapons as a strategic deterrent.
By the mid-1980s, Syria had begun producing chemical agents. In 1983, U.S. national intelligence estimates first identified a Syrian chemical weapons production facility. A 2014 British government disclosure confirmed that Syria had, by 1986, acquired hundreds of tons of chemical precursors, including trimethylphosphite, dimethylphosphite and hydrogen fluoride, from the UK and had begun developing nerve agents like sarin. By 1990, U.S. officials and media reports indicated that Syria had converted several agricultural chemical plants into sarin production facilities. In 1997, U.S. and Israeli sources claimed Syria’s program included facilities in Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo capable of producing sarin, mustard gas, and potentially VX, the most deadly nerve agent known.
As a result, the U.S. banned sales of sarin and mustard precursors to Syria in the 1980s, pushing Damascus toward the black market. In 1996, Russian authorities accused retired general Anatoly Kuntsevich of shipping 800 kilograms of precursors to Syria. Though the charges were later dropped, Israeli media reported that Kuntsevich eventually admitted to transferring these materials.
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Between 2002 and 2006, CIA reports repeatedly confirmed Syria’s possession of sarin and its efforts to develop more toxic and persistent nerve agents. A 2009 intelligence report concluded that the Syrian military could carry out chemical attacks via aircraft, long-range missiles and artillery.
In June 2012, Israeli Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Naveh declared that Syria possessed the largest chemical weapons stockpile in the world, built up over four decades, which included sarin, mustard gas and other nerve agents. The following month, the Syrian government made its first implicit acknowledgment of these weapons, not through official declarations, but through their use on the battlefield, which left unmistakable evidence on victims’ bodies.
This story is written by Rizik Alabi and reprinted with permission from The Media Line