Eurasia Press & News
Analysis: Israel wants a weak Syria; Turkey wants a stable one. Their competing ambitions are creating a dangerous new faultline for Damascus to manage
Damascus – Syria’s Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani met with Israel’s Mossad chief Roman Gofman in Jordan on 23 August following days of escalating tensions that resulted in an Israeli strike on a Syrian airbase in northern Idlib.
According to reports, the two met in order to “lower the temperature” following this latest bout of tensions.
Whilst it was not the first round of direct diplomacy between Syrian and Israeli officials, it represented the first instance of direct meetings at such a senior level.
The renewed risk of escalation comes amid growing competition between Israel and Turkey, as each regional power pursues a different – largely incongruous – strategy over Syria’s future.
Yet US efforts to restrain Israeli aggression have achieved some limited success, say analysts.
Growing competition
Israel claimed the strike on Abu al-Duhur airbase on 18 August was due to Turkey being close to breaching “the status quo on security matters” by deploying troops into Syria. Turkey denied that any of its forces had been at the base before or during the attack,
The airstrike was “clearly a message not just to the Syrian administration but also to Turkey,” Caroline Rose, a senior director at The Soufan Centre, told The New Arab.
“They want Turkey to know that they have the ability to strike them anywhere in Syria in order to deter further perceived encroachment.”
According to Muaz Al-Abdullah, Middle East Research Manager at the conflict-tracking organisation, Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), this follows a pattern of behaviour in which Israel strikes any military installation that Turkey seeks to redevelop.
“They also struck T4, Hama and Palmyra airbases following Turkish attempts to redevelop them,” he explained to The New Arab. “It serves a dual purpose of limiting Turkish influence within Syria and preventing the Syrian military from redeveloping.”
This comes amid what Rose describes as “a growing competition” between Turkey and Israel regionally.
Turkish-Israeli relations have soured massively since 7 October. Whilst both countries have full diplomatic relations, Turkey recalled its ambassador in November 2023 in protest over Israeli actions in Gaza.
In February, meanwhile, former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett described Turkey as belonging to a “monstrous axis,” alongside Qatar, in part for its hosting of Hamas officials.
A recent article in Israel Hayom, a pro-Likud outlet, assessed the possibility of an Israeli strike on Turkish forces in Syria triggering NATO’s self-defence clause. It concluded that such an attack would not draw in Turkey’s NATO allies.
Turkey recently signed a mutual defence agreement with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan – what some commentators have taken to calling an ‘Islamic NATO.’
“The mutual defence agreement is a major step,” Issam Al-Reis, a researcher with ETANA, a Syrian research group, told The New Arab.
“For Saudi Arabia, it is a counter to a possible Iranian attack, and for Turkey it is important to deter a possible future scenario in which it’s attacked by Israel,” he added.
“There is a sense of increased recklessness from the Israelis and Turkey is likely wondering if after Iran, they are next on the hit list.”
Divided strategies
Part of the tensions are driven by Israel and Turkey’s conflicting strategies in Syria. “Turkey was one of the primary supporters of the Syrian revolution,” says Al-Reis.
“Now their strategy is driven by a desire for a stable Syria that will allow the millions of refugees within Turkey to return home and provide a calm southern border.”
As such, they have sought to develop Syria’s state capacity, and “expand its military footprint in order to stabilise the country and counter groups that they consider to be terrorist organisations like the Syrian Democratic Forces,” explains Al-Reis.
Yet Al-Abdullah cautions about wholly conflating Israel’s attempts to counter Turkey with its own strategy within Syria. “These two dynamics are linked but also separate,” he argues. Israel has its reasons to oppose the Syrian government.
It sees “a Syria capable of launching attacks as a threat and so wants to see Syria weak and fragmented,” believes Rose. “They seek to counter or at the very least delay Syrian rearmament.”
Similarly, Israel has supported non-state actors within Syria, such as Druze Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri’s National Guard in Suweida, in order to keep Damascus weak.
The US, seeking a stable centralised Syria, has been attempting to restrain Israel with mixed results. US Special Envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, condemned Israel’s recent strike as “an unnecessary escalation that does not advance regional stability”.
However, Al-Abdullah notes that according to ACLED’s data, the number of Israeli strikes on Syria is consistently decreasing over time, but that “occasionally Israel still decides to act without the US greenlight”.
Stalled talks
Syrian and Israeli officials have taken part in several rounds of talks in Paris, the latest being on 6 January 2026, designed to establish a ‘deconfliction mechanism’ and set out the ground for the possible future security architecture between the two countries.
According to analysts, these talks have been largely inconclusive and have failed to halt Israeli violations both within the newly occupied territories in Quneitra and Daraa and beyond.
On 14 August, following the resumption of Syrian air force training flights, Israel had reportedly planned on striking a number of airbases in order to disable the last vestiges of Syria’s air force.
It is worth noting that 80% of Assad’s air force was destroyed by Israel in the days following the fall of the Assad regime, leaving Syria now with barely a handful of old Soviet fighter jets.
Whilst the planned strikes were reportedly blocked by the White House, the days after saw numerous attempts to resolve the dispute – including a reported phone call between Shaibani and Gofman – which failed to prevent escalation.
Part of the reasoning behind the recent meeting in Jordan is likely to correct this, with both sides discussing the possibility of establishing “a special operations room” in Jordan under US supervision to prevent any confrontation in Syria.
“This meeting is significant both because Syria’s senior leadership actually met with the Israelis but also because it was publicly acknowledged by the Syrians,” says Al-Abdullah.
This represents a step change in Syrian officials’ willingness to candidly acknowledge their attempts to foster dialogue with Israel. Despite that, he remains pessimistic about the outcome of talks.
“The two actors are negotiating different things,” he explains. Syria is hoping to return to a status quo ante, which would see Israel leave the newly occupied areas in return for a deconfliction arrangement similar to the 1974 deconfliction arrangement.
Whereas Israel, reflecting a new post-7 October security mindset that is also visible in Lebanon and Gaza, wants to create “an unliveable buffer zone close to their borders through demolitions, eviction and the poisoning of agriculture”.
Ultimately, this would entail Israel leveraging its position to pressure Syria into accepting major concessions like diplomatic normalisation or the recognition of Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights – both of which are political non-starters in Damascus.
It is for this reason that he expects this pattern of latent tensions that sporadically erupt to continue.
However, Al-Abdullah stresses that despite the fierce rhetoric on all sides, neither side is seeking a full-blown conflict and so for now “whilst Syria might be a theatre for confrontation, it is not yet the Middle East’s next battleground”.
