Jordan Foils Major Drug Smuggling Attempt from Syria

A Jordanian army patrol is deployed at the border with Syria to prevent drug smuggling, April 2023. (AFP)

07:46-18 May 2024 AD ـ 11 Thul-Qi’dah 1445 AH

A Jordanian army patrol is deployed at the border with Syria to prevent drug smuggling, April 2023. (AFP)

The Jordanian army announced on Friday that it thwarted a major drug smuggling operation from Syria.

In a statement, it said two smugglers were killed and others wounded in the operation. Some smugglers managed to flee back to Syria.

The army seized the drugs and weapons in possession of the smugglers.

Asharq Al-Awsat learned that the Jordanian authorities will release some of the confessions of Syrian smugglers it had detained in late 2023.

They were arrested during a clash that led to the arrest of nine smugglers along the northeastern border.

Jordanian sources had previously told Asharq Al-Awsat that smuggling gangs active in southern Syria were cooperating with Jordanian cells to deliver illicit material to the eastern Ruwaished region before smuggling them to neighboring countries.

Authorities soon carried out an operation against the cell, arresting some members and killing others. The search is still ongoing for some fugitive members.

Amman accuses Iran and its allied militias, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah which is active in southern Syria, of being behind the drugs smuggling.

It says the operations aim to cause tensions and security instability in Jordan.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi met with his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in New York in mid-April where they were attending a United Nations Security Council meeting on the Middle East.

Safadi informed Abdollahian that “Jordan won’t allow Iran or Israel to turn it into a warzone.” Jordan will “confront any violation of its territories and threat to its security and safety of its citizens,” he vowed.

“Jordan wants good relations with Iran, but getting there demands the removal of the sources of tension and the immediate end of meddling in Jordanian affairs,” he stressed.

Damascus did not comment on the latest drug smuggling attempt, but local media sources said the operation had taken place in the desert area between Syria and Jordan.

It added that a person in connection to the government-affiliated Fifth Brigade was involved in the smuggling attempt.

Assad-era Syrian Reactor was Configured for Nuclear Weapons, IAEA Chief Says

The logo of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the organization's headquarters in Vienna, Austria, March 6, 2023 (Reuters)

16:14-7 September 2026 AD ـ 25 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1448 AH

Assad-era Syrian Reactor was Configured for Nuclear Weapons, IAEA Chief Says

The logo of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the organization's headquarters in Vienna, Austria, March 6, 2023 (Reuters)

The Assad-era government in Syria was constructing a nuclear reactor that was configured to produce fissile material for possible use in nuclear weapons, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Monday.

The “configuration” and the “technical features” of the nuclear reactor under construction in Syria during the leadership of ousted former President Bashar Assad were “very efficient in the production of fissile material that could be directly used for the fabrication of nuclear weapons,” IAEA director general Rafael Grossi said.

“Of course, that was never declared, that was always denied, so, and again, intentions cannot be judged, but that was a very serious proliferation concern that we had, and this has been difficult work,” he told reporters on the first day of a regular meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors, in Vienna.

Syria was believed to have operated an extensive undeclared nuclear program under Assad that included a nuclear reactor built by North Korea in eastern Deir el-Zour province.

Following Assad’s ouster, the new government agreed to give IAEA inspectors access to suspected former nuclear sites.

During a visit to Syria in August, IAEA inspectors confirmed that “the cooling infrastructure which has now been uncovered is consistent with that of a nuclear reactor.” Grossi and a team of senior inspectors also visited a previously undeclared site in the country.

Inspectors had to ‘tear down walls’ to find hidden material Syria notified the agency of the site’s existence in a July 17 letter and invited the IAEA “to cooperate with the Syrian authorities in the inspection and verification of the site and of any nuclear material to be potentially found.”

The IAEA said in its confidential report circulated to member states last Tuesday and seen by The Associated Press that this new site contained “natural uranium metal in the form of fuel rods with cladding.” The agency verified the material and confirmed “the presence of around 73 tonnes of natural uranium metal.”

Grossi said when the inspectors visited the site in August they had to “tear down walls” and go through “very difficult and narrow passages” to reach the nuclear material that had been hidden. The site had “boxes scattered all over the place,” he said.

Grossi said that “the important thing is that this material now is under safeguards” of the IAEA, adding that agency inspectors had managed to install cameras at the location, The AP news reported.

Syria to decide what happens next Asked if the nuclear material will remain in Syria or be removed, Grossi said that this is “a matter that the Syrian government will have to decide.” He added: “We are not requesting them to do this or to do that. For us what’s important is that we know all the time where this (material) is until the last gram.”

Logan Mintz, a director for nuclear materials security at the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, said that natural uranium metal is not directly usable for a nuclear weapon but it could be “diverted to a covert weapons program that further processes it into plutonium for a nuclear weapon.”

She said that once deemed safe to move, the material could be “transported in certified containers” to a third country that can “safely and securely disposition it into a more chemically stable and more widely used form” for possible use in nuclear power plants.

“As with any transport of nuclear material, this movement would require robust security from theft or sabotage,” she said.

Arab World

Syria Arrests Assad-era General Accused of Deadly Repression

A large Syrian flag flutters above Tishreen Park in Damascus, June 4, 2025. (AFP)

Asharq Al Awsat

15:42-7 September 2026 AD ـ 25 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1448 AH

Asharq Al Awsat

15:42-7 September 2026 AD ـ 25 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1448 AH

Syria Arrests Assad-era General Accused of Deadly Repression

A large Syrian flag flutters above Tishreen Park in Damascus, June 4, 2025. (AFP)

Syrian authorities on Monday said they had arrested a former general accused of involvement in the bloody repression of protests in 2011 that sparked the country's civil war and the 1982 Hama massacre.

In a statement, security forces said they "arrested former Major General Mohammed Ali Durgham, a prominent officer in the military establishment during the era of the former regime" of Bashar al-Assad, who was ousted in 2024.

They accused him of "issuing direct orders to his units to fire on unarmed demonstrators in the Damascus countryside" after anti-Assad protests had erupted in 2011.

Durgham was a field commander in the army's feared Fourth Division, commanded by Assad's brother Maher al-Assad, between 2009 and 2013.

Human Rights Watch in 2011 quoted a Syrian army defector who said that Durgham was one of the generals who "ordered the troops to shoot at protesters when his unit was deployed to areas in and just outside of Damascus".

He has been under European Union sanctions since 2012.

Bashar al-Assad's crackdown turned the nationwide movement into a 13-year-long civil war that killed more than half a million people.

Authorities said Durgham had started "as a squad commander in the Defense Brigades during the events in Hama Governorate in 1982".

On February 2, 1982, amid an information blackout, Assad's father and then-Syrian president Hafez al-Assad launched a brutal crackdown in the central Syrian city of Hama against an armed Muslim Brotherhood revolt.

Survivors who witnessed extrajudicial executions told AFP that the authorities spared no one, with government forces killing men, women and children.

The death toll of the 27 days of violence has never been formally established, though estimates usually range from 10,000 to 40,000, with some going higher still.

Since Bashar al-Assad's overthrow in December 2024, Syria's new authorities have arrested dozens of former security officials, and trials began in April.

In August, Syria sentenced Bashar al-Assad, his brother Maher al-Assad and five other security officials to death in absentia for atrocities committed during the civil war, the first such ruling under the new authorities.

The former president fled Syria as his government was falling and is believed to be living in Russia.

Arab World

Board of Peace's Mladenov Says Gaza, West Bank Escalation Makes Two-state Solution 'Impossible'

Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative for Gaza under the US-backed "Board of Peace" tasked with implementing the October 2025 ceasefire plan, speaks at the Hili Forum 2026 in Abu Dhabi on September 7, 2026. (Photo by FADEL SENNA / AFP)

Asharq Al Awsat

15:11-7 September 2026 AD ـ 25 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1448 AH

Asharq Al Awsat

15:11-7 September 2026 AD ـ 25 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1448 AH

Board of Peace's Mladenov Says Gaza, West Bank Escalation Makes Two-state Solution 'Impossible'

A top official within the US-backed Board of Peace said on Monday that a failure to move forward in Gaza paired with rising violence in the West Bank are making a two-state solution "impossible".

Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative for Gaza under the US-backed "Board of Peace" tasked with implementing an October ceasefire plan, was speaking at the Hili Forum in Abu Dhabi.

"I would say that if Gaza continues the way it is now, or does not move into implementing... the plan that we have under the comprehensive plan, the two-state solution will become practically impossible," he said.

"Because, with everything that is happening in the West Bank, and with more than 50 percent of Gaza now under the control of the Israeli army and less than 50 percent under the control of Hamas, there is no credible pathway forward to a political resolution of the conflict," he added.

A roadmap agreed by Hamas on July 30 said that the decommissioning of weapons would be supervised by the International Stabilization Force, the nascent unit that aims to deploy to Gaza if the situation calms. It is led by US Major General Jasper Jeffers.

Hamas had pledged to hand over its weapons to a new Palestinian governing body, an arrangement that brought skepticism from Netanyahu but which Trump hailed as a breakthrough.

The West Bank has also seen a surge in violence since the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip following Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, AFP reported.

More than 500,000 Israelis live in illegal settlements in the Palestinian territory, home to some three million Palestinians.

"The only way that we can build back to that is if we have transitional governance, if we have decommissioning of weapons, if we have withdrawal in Gaza," he said.

On Sunday, Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a US envoy, told a press briefing in Kyiv that the upcoming Israeli elections were making Israeli leaders "a little irrational" on Gaza.

"We agree with them on the end state," Kushner said, referring to Israel. "They just have a crazy election and that makes them a little irrational in certain regards but we're very determined and we're working through these things."

"You can't go in if there's guns," he said, adding: "we're now starting to understand the scope of the militarisation of Gaza. It is beyond your comprehension. And so demilitarising it is not going to be easy."

Jordan Foils Major Drug Smuggling Attempt from Syria

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