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U.S. Ambassador to Türkiye Tom Barrack stated that the Israeli strikes on Syrian airfields had been conducted without the knowledge or consent of the Turkish government. Ambassador Barrack revealed that, via their respective intelligence services, the Syrian government and the Israeli Mossad had ascertained prior to the strikes that there were no Turkish military assets in the area.
Barrack laid out the diplomatic efforts the U.S. took to facilitate peaceful Israeli monitoring of Syrian activities — efforts that ultimately fell apart.
“Israel had told us for a preceding five days they were concerned about what was going on,” Barrack stated. “We went to our intelligence agencies. Syria talked to Mossad, gave them the information that there were no Turkish military, there were no Turkish convoys, there were no Turkish armaments, and that there was nothing adversarial or offensive going on. That was on Friday. They were supposed to meet again the next week.”
Despite that, Israel struck — without warning Ankara.
“Something went wrong,” Ambassador Barrack continued. “And they decided in the last minute to bomb the craters on the two runways. The problem was that the Turkish side was not notified.”
Barrack says that Turkish military assets are a powerful force, and that because of already difficult political rhetoric between the two countries, Israeli jets coming 80 kilometers to the Turkish border without notification is a very serious issue.
The Ambassador went out of his way to explain how the strike may have been driven by Israeli domestic politics — and how those pressures cause Israel to act irrationally.
“However, they are in the midst of an election. These kinds of issues affect their rational judgment on all of these other issues, and so, rather than going off and doing something independently, we would encourage them to have a discussion with Turkey on a back channel or on a front channel,” Barrack said.
Barrack said that Turkey was not acting aggressively toward Israel and in fact wanted to prevent an aggressive posture by other actors.
“Türkiye does not have an aggressive or offensive posture against Israel. We don’t want to engage in kinetic or military operations. We want a sovereign and independent Syria. It’s what everybody wants. It’s what Israel wants also.”
On the broader diplomatic effort, Barrack noted a possible temporary setback but remained overall optimistic.
“Almost two years of trying to build trust and make tiny baby steps forward of what we would like to achieve in the region, and that gets temporarily derailed by a couple of airstrikes,” he said.
Those comments came just days after Syria formally requested to join the International Partnership Against Impunity for the Use of Chemical Weapons — a bid widely seen as Damascus attempting to signal a clean break from the Assad era. That diplomatic opening now hangs in the balance as the fallout from the Israeli strikes continues.
The White House seems to be keen to focus on the Israeli electoral politics of the strike. Netanhayu’s opposition in Israel has also brought out this angle.
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