Envoy says Israel did not give the US notice before strikes on Syrian base

SaveSharefacebookxwhatsapp-strokecopylinkUS Ambassador to Turkiye and Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack speaks on a panel at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in southern Turkiye on April 17 [File: Riza Ozel/AP Photo]By Al Jazeera Staff, AFP and ReutersPublished On 22 Aug 202622 Aug 2026Tom Barrack, the United States ambassador to Turkiye and its special envoy to Syria, has accused Israel of offering no warning before carrying out military strikes in Syria this week, though Israeli officials insisted it did.Barrack, who called the Israeli strikes an “unnecessary escalation”, said in an interview on Friday that the attacks on the Abu Duhur military base in northern Syria may have been aimed at “baiting the Turks”, who have substantial influence in the region.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3US pressure on Israel needed for peace in Syrialist 2 of 3Israel attacks airbase in Syria’s Idlib as US, Turkiye slam ‘escalation’list 3 of 3Rubio says Trump envoy Barrack to step down from Syria postend of listIsraeli officials, who have warned Turkiye against supplementing its military presence in Syria, angrily denounced the comments from Barrack.Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a social media post on Saturday that Israel had shared “intelligence information to the authorised parties in the United States” prior to the strike on Tuesday. Israel has stepped up threats against Turkiye in recent months, portraying the country as a potential rival that aims to expand its regional influence. Turkiye, for its part, blasted the Israeli strikes as “reckless”.Katz denounced Barrack’s comments as “full of inaccuracies and positions that contradict the stance of US President [Donald] Trump himself”, regarding Israel’s military occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights.While Barrack has acknowledged the territory as occupied, the first Trump administration recognised Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights in 2019.The Syrian territory is considered occupied under international law, after it was captured from Syria during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.Israel has routinely launched strikes in Syria and occupied swaths of its southern regions since the ouster of former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.In the years since, Israeli forces have expelled Syrians from their homes in the country’s southwest and set up military infrastructure in the area.The US has attempted to broker talks between the two countries to de-escalate the situation. Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda fighter who has cultivated close ties with the US and Turkiye, has stressed that his government is not seeking conflict with Israel. Despite occasional criticism of Israel’s actions in Syria and elsewhere, the Trump administration has taken no firm measures to pressure Israel to stop its military campaigns.Trump has also continued to adhere to the US policy of near-unconditional support for Tel Aviv, praising Israel as a “great ally”.To justify this week’s attacks on the Abu Duhur military base, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government feared Turkiye was preparing to deploy troops to the area and had ignored warnings against doing so.Turkiye has denied such allegations. Barrack said that the US had concluded that the purported military activity at the base was “not happening”.Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said on Wednesday that the government had made it clear to Israel that there were no plans for a Turkish military base at Abu Duhur.He added that Turkish military officers had visited the facility as part of “ongoing military cooperation in the areas of training and the exchange of expertise”.