The IAEA admits that the Syrian site - which Assad may or may not be rebuilding - certainly looked like a nuke facility. Only the dumbest anti-Israel media hacks deny that nuclear materials were involved. We would know even more except the IAEA's contacts keep dying and their potential evidence keep disappearing:

The chief UN nuclear inspector said Thursday that his agency's Syria probe has been hampered because key satellite images of an alleged nuclear reactor bombed by Israel are inexplicably unavailable on the market. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei did not point any fingers in the "baffling" failure of his agency's efforts to obtain the images of the Syrian site immediately after it was bombed by Israel last year.

So naturally:

The UN nuclear agency has approved technical aid for Syria despite suspicions that the country had a secret atomic program that could be used to make weapons. The decision appeared to be a defeat for the US and its allies. They called for rejection of the package meant to help Syria set up a power-producing reactor... The International Atomic Energy Agency is probing allegations that Syria had a covert program... Washington says the facility was almost completed and ready to produce plutonium, a fissile warhead component.

I was inclined to frame this as an IAEA vs. US diplomatic squabble, with maybe Syria getting in some of that UN retaliation that they've been looking for since the October raid. But I think Carl's explanation is probably closer to the truth.

References and previously after the jump...