They have a lot of uranium, in mines run by the French. It is where Libya’s Qadaffi was getting his uranium before he got cold feet. His weapons development program involved Iraqi scientists like Obeidi.
Of course Qadaffi’s Libya and Saddam’s Iraq were Russian client states all that time, and both harbored the PFLP and ANO (the highjacking/terrorist group headed by Abu Nidal, who was based in Syria then later in Iraq where he died in 2002 with a half dozen or so “suicidal” shots to the head).