By Timour Azhari and Rami Ayyub<\/p>\n
Aug 19 (Reuters) – The head of Israel’s spy agency held a phone call with Syria’s foreign minister last week during which they discussed Turkey’s military presence in Syria, three people familiar with the matter \u200csaid, just days before Israel bombed a Syrian airbase. The August 14 call between Mossad spy agency chief Roman Gofman and \u200cSyrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani is one of the highest-level contacts yet between Israel and the Damascus administration led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa. The Israeli prime minister’s office, which \u200bhandles queries regarding Mossad, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did a spokesperson for Shaibani. After Israel attacked the Abu al-Duhur airbase on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Damascus was on the verge of permitting Turkish troops to deploy there, and had ignored Israel’s repeated warnings that such a deployment would pose a threat to Israel’s security. The sources said the issue of Turkish military support for \u200cSyria dominated Gofman’s call with Shaibani four days \u2060earlier. The call centred on “Israeli inquiries about what (Turkey) was doing in terms of increasing their military presence, as well as the sale of weapons, provision of drones and other issues”, one of the sources said. A second \u2060source, a senior official, said Gofman used the call to ask about Turkey’s provision of arms to Syria’s army. A third source familiar with the matter confirmed the call took place, saying that they discussed Turkey’s military presence in Syria. Turkey’s defence ministry declined to comment and its foreign ministry did \u200bnot \u200bimmediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
NETANYAHU WARNS OVER TURKEY-SYRIA TIES Turkey has \u200bemerged as a close ally of the Sharaa administration since \u200cBashar al-Assad was toppled in 2024, having backed rebels during the Syrian civil war, stirring concern in Israel about rising Turkish sway on its northern frontier.<\/p>\n
Sharaa, who has established close ties with Washington, said in July that Syria was seeking to reach a security agreement with Israel and trying to involve a large group of countries to pressure Israel to adopt a more balanced policy towards his country. Netanyahu, in a video posted on X on Wednesday, said Israel “will not tolerate a Turkish military establishment in Syria that threatens Israel”. “We made it clear to \u200cTurkey \u2014 Don’t. Apparently they didn’t hear the message, so we made sure they \u200bunderstood it better,” he said, in an apparent reference to the airstrikes. The Turkish \u200bpresidency on Wednesday rejected what it called “untenable allegations” by Israel regarding \u200bits military position in Syria, saying Israel aimed to legitimise its “unlawful airstrikes targeting Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”. \u200cTurkey would “continue to cooperate with the Syrian Government on \u200ba legitimate basis for the establishment of \u200bpeace, stability, and prosperity”, it said, without referring to any potential deployment plans. Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria and Iraq, said on Tuesday the Israeli strikes were “an unnecessary escalation that does not advance regional stability”.<\/p>\n
In \u200bseparate comments to Reuters on Tuesday, Barrack said that \u200cWashington was working to establish a deconfliction mechanism among Israel, Turkey and Syria, and added the U.S. already facilitates an \u200binformation-sharing and dialogue mechanism among the parties.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Timour Azhari and Rami Ayyub; Additional reporting by Daren Butler in \u200bIstanbul; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Lisa Shumaker)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Timour Azhari and Rami Ayyub Aug 19 (Reuters) – The head of Israel’s spy agency held a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[30],"tags":[37,29562,25068,95,1176,70639],"class_list":["post-257038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-syria","tag-israel","tag-military-presence","tag-roman-gofman","tag-syria","tag-turkey","tag-turkish-military"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117125696876843547","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}