ISTANBUL\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Israel did not warn the United States before it struck an air base in northern Syria this week, despite fears of an escalation with U.S. ally Turkey, the American special envoy to Syria said.<\/p>\n
Israel usually closely coordinates its military actions with the U.S., its key backer. Washington has tried to use this influence to moderate attacks as Israel carries out operations in Syria, Gaza and Lebanon. <\/p>\n
Tom Barrack, who also serves as ambassador to Turkey, said the attack Tuesday on the Abu Duhur base could have been Israel \u201cbaiting the Turks,\u201d which he said \u201cwas the serious and worrying part.\u201d<\/p>\n
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, however, contradicted Barrack\u2019s assertion that there was no warning, saying in a statement that Israel decided to alert senior members of the Syrian government. \u201cSimultaneously, we transferred the intelligence reports to the relevant authorities in the U.S.,\u201d Katz added. <\/p>\n
In the wake of the strikes, which caused damage but no casualties, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the base was attacked because Syria was \u201con the verge of breaching\u201d an agreement by allowing Turkish troops to deploy there.<\/p>\n
Barrack said it was likely that Israel had intelligence suggesting Turkey may be bolstering its presence in the area, and \u201ca commander somewhere in the field made a decision, \u2018We\u2019re not going to let that happen.\u2019 \u2026 What they didn\u2019t do is tell us or Turkey.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that another possible reason for the attack on Abu Duhur, about 50 miles east of the Turkish border, was a miscommunication between the Israeli military and the country\u2019s intelligence agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen [Turkish military forces] see these jets coming towards the border and they don\u2019t know what the purpose, direction or intention is, they start to say, \u2018We\u2019re going to have to scramble our own,\u2019\u201d Barrack said as he outlined how close he believed Israel and Turkey came to direct confrontation. <\/p>\n
In 2015, Turkey had shot down a Russian jet over its Syrian frontier. The ambassador\u2019s comments were published on X late Friday by Mario Nawfal, a Lebanese Australian entrepreneur.<\/p>\n
Barrack also said that Israel \u201cstill\u201d occupies the Golan Heights in violation of United Nations resolutions. His boss, President Trump, however, issued a proclamation in 2019 recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the territory, reversing decades of U.S. policy.<\/p>\n
Katz, the Israeli defense minister, said the strike on the base was authorized after the \u201cwarning wasn\u2019t heeded,\u201d adding that there were \u201cclear intelligence reports\u201d of Turkey\u2019s intention to use the base \u201cto harm Israel.\u201d He did not provide further detail.<\/p>\n
Barrack\u2019s comments were \u201cfull of inaccuracies and positions that contradict\u201d Trump\u2019s position on the Golan Heights, the minister added.<\/p>\n
Two Syrian officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, said Wednesday that a Turkish delegation had visited the air base in Syria\u2019s northwestern province of Idlib a day before the airstrike to review reconstruction work underway there.<\/p>\n
Israel had raised concerns about Turkish military activity at the air base, but the U.S. concluded that was \u201cnot happening,\u201d Barrack said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe unintended consequence of a mistake could be really consequential,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Turkey has been supporting Syria\u2019s effort to rebuild its armed forces by training Syrian personnel and supplying equipment and logistical support. The two countries signed an agreement last year that formalized their military cooperation.<\/p>\n
Turkish government officials have repeatedly stated that they do not consider Syria\u2019s security separate from their own.<\/p>\n
Israel, meanwhile, has remained suspicious of the new authorities in Damascus, led by former Islamist insurgents. Syria\u2019s interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa has said repeatedly that he does not want conflict with Israel.<\/p>\n
Israel carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria after the fall of Bashar Assad\u2019s government in late 2024. The Israeli military also seized control of a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone in southern Syria, which it continues to occupy.<\/p>\n
Turkey, which recently signed a defense pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, gave no indication that it would respond militarily to the Israeli strikes in Syria, but the incident added further strain to Turkish-Israeli relations.<\/p>\n
Wilks writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Ghaith Alsayed in Damascus contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ISTANBUL\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Israel did not warn the United States before it struck an air base in northern Syria this week,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[30],"tags":[62989,7831,71616,2618,669,37,11431,28425,722,680,95,71615,3623,1176,71617,683],"class_list":["post-260538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-syria","tag-air-base","tag-ambassador","tag-american-envoy","tag-comment","tag-golan-heights","tag-israel","tag-northern-syria","tag-position","tag-president-trump","tag-strike","tag-syria","tag-syrian-airstrike","tag-tom-barrack","tag-turkey","tag-turkish-military-force","tag-u-s"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117141083593701147","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260538","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=260538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}