Tom Barrack, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy to Syria, has suggested that Israel may have tried to provoke a confrontation with Turkey as a political calculation ahead of elections.
In an interview with podcast host Mario Nawfal, Mr Barrack described the high tensions between Turkey and Israel. He said Israel conducted a strike on a military airfield in eastern Idlib last week, even though diplomatic communication was happening through a backchannel shortly before the attack.
One theory was that “the Israelis were baiting the Turks”, he said, tying this to a possible “very aggressive but maybe a well-received pre-election concept”. Israel is due to hold a general election on October 27. Mr Barrack stressed he was presenting theories, not determinations.
He said that in the days ahead of the Israeli strike on the runway at Abu Al Duhur military airfield, initial intelligence suggested there might have been some Turkish military movement into the base, which would have been concerning for the US, given the tensions between Ankara and Israel.
The Turkish presidency has called the Israeli allegations “untenable” and “intended to legitimise” Israel’s “unlawful” action at the base, without ruling out any potential deployment.
Mr Barrack said the US assessment was that there was no such Turkish troop movement towards the base. “We all did our due diligence, we went back to our respective intelligence agencies. The answers we got were 'no, this is not happening',” Mr Barrack said.
Nonetheless, Israel proceeded with the attack after an Israeli “commander in the field somewhere said we are going to make sure that doesn't happen, and we're going to take out the runways”.
“What they [Israel] didn't do is tell us, or tell Turkey,” he said.
Mr Barrack said there may have been a miscommunication between Israel's intelligence service and the military. He said Israel, which destroyed much of Syria's air force after the Assad regime collapsed, wanted a “clear line of sight to Iran”.
“They don't want the risk of defensive radar or offensive ability to deter or intervene in the necessity that they need to move against Iran,” he said. He stressed that the situation could easily have escalated when the Turkish military saw Israeli jets crossing Syria towards the Turkish border without knowing why.
“Thank goodness calm heads really came to the moment of the day,” he said. “It was one of those moments where I think, for many of us, our whole life went in front of us.”
