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

Though Israeli authorities insisted it did, tom 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.

Key points

• While Barrack has acknowledged the territory as occupied, the first Trump administration recognised Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights in 2019.
• After it was captured from Syria during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Syrian territory is considered occupied under international law.
• Israel has routinely introduced strikes in Syria and occupied swaths of its southern regions since the ouster of former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
• Katz denounced Barrack's comments as "full of inaccuracies and positions that contradict the stance of US President Trump himself", regarding Israel's military occupation of Syria's Golan Heights.
• 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.

Barrack, who called the Israeli strikes an "unnecessary escalation", remarked 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". This person have substantial influence in the region.

Israeli authorities, who have cautioned Turkiye against supplementing its military presence in Syria, angrily denounced the comments from Barrack.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz remarked 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 intends to expand its regional influence. Turkiye, for its part, blasted the Israeli strikes as "reckless".

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.

For context, the US has attempted to broker discussions 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 administration is not seeking conflict with Israel.

Trump has additionally continued to adhere to the US policy of near-unconditional backing 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 remarked his administration feared Turkiye was preparing to deploy troops to the area and had ignored warnings against doing so.

Turkiye has denied such allegations. According to Barrack, the US had concluded that the purported military activity at the base was "not happening".

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani remarked on Wednesday that the administration had created it clear to Israel that there were no aims for a Turkish military base at Abu Duhur.

He continued that Turkish military officers had visited the facility as part of "ongoing military cooperation in the areas of training and the exchange of expertise".

In short, envoy says Israel did not give the US notice before strikes on is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.