Air Strike on a Syrian Airbase, Widely Attributed to Israel, Raises Mideast Tensions

A strike that destroyed facilities at a northern Syrian airfield, widely attributed to the Israeli airforce, is raising regional tensions, angering Turkey, and generating criticism within some Washington quarters. Tuesday morning’s four waves of airstrikes at the Abu al-Duhur military airbase, situated 43 miles away from the Turkish border, damaged the runway and several warehouses. No casualties are reported. While officials at Jerusalem are mum about the rare attack, the Israel Defense Forces is widely seen as the only power with the capacity and motivation for such an operation. Jerusalem widely sees Turkey’s presence in Syria as a threat. Separately, remnants of nuclear matters were recently discovered in an undisclosed Syrian site. On Tuesday the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, visited Syria’s “Deir Ez-Zor and a second location related to the nuclear material identified by Syria recently,” according to the nuclear agency’s website, which did not disclose the location of the second site.Syria’s foreign minister, Asaad al-Shiabani, vowed on Tuesday to keep the nuclear material — likely left over from Syria’s past attempt to obtain nuclear arms — on Syrian soil. The discovery of radioactive components that could be assembled into what is known as a “dirty bomb” is worrisome to Israel. Yet it is unclear if it was the target of the Tuesday strike. “We don’t know what was targeted,” the founder of Alma Research, Sarit Zehavi, tells The New York Sun, adding though that past clues might be instructive. Last April Israel struck an airbase near Homs to “prevent Turkey from establishing capabilities there,” according to Alma. An unidentified Israeli official told Axios that the strike “aimed at preventing Turkish military buildup” at the airport. An Ankara official denied that Turkey was present there; however, Kan News quoted a Syrian television report that Turkish military advisers visited the airport a day before the strike “in order to repair its runway.” Jeruselm is leery of the Damascus government, which is led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former Sunni terrorist. “From the Israeli point of view, until proven otherwise, it’s a Jihadi regime,” a former IDF spokesman, Jonathan Conricus, told I-24.Washington, and in particular America’s ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, is promoting the idea that Mr. Sharaa has converted and that under him Syria could eventually join the Abraham Accords and make peace with Israel. “We are deeply concerned that the confirmed Israeli airstrikes on Abu al-Duhur Airbase constitute an unnecessary escalation,” Mr. Barrack, who is also special envoy to Syria, wrote on X Tuesday. He called on all sides to prefer “logical discourse over further military incidents.” Last week, though, Kan News reported that an unidentified Arab country was pushing another Arab country to “pursue an agreement with Israel in order to lull it to sleep, while preparing for a larger confrontation.” Analysts speculated that the second country in the report was a reference to Syria. Mr. Barrack, a businessman close to President Trump, is also close to Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr. Sharaa took power at Damascus with Turkish military support. Turkey is Mr. Sharaa’s patron and strongest supporter. Ankara, which openly hosts Sunni terrorist groups like Hamas, is increasingly hostile to Israel. “Tom Barrack is his own man,” a Turkey watcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Sinan Ciddi, tells the Sun. The ambassador “probably condemned the strike without clearing it” with the State Department, Mr. Ciddi surmises.Soon after Mr. Barrack posted his condemnation, an unidentified senior Israeli official told Fox News that “sensitive, classified intelligence was shared with the U.S. at the highest levels prior to the strikes,” adding that Mr. Sharaa “understands that he will not be able to act like the previous regime.” Other reports cited a senior Israeli official as doubting if Mr. Sharaa knew what was in the base. The nuclear material that was found in an undisclosed site in Syria might be unrelated to the Tuesday strike. Yet Israeli sources are concerned that even as Syria promises cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, it is intent on keeping custody of the material. In a press conference alongside Mr. Grossi, the foreign minister, Mr. Shaibani, said that Syria “exercises sovereign responsibility over all nuclear material on its territory, that the material remains in Syrian national custody, and that Syria will continue to perform its responsibilities in accordance with its international obligations and its national interests.”

Air Strike on a Syrian Airbase, Widely Attributed to Israel, Raises Mideast Tensions

Air Strike on a Syrian Airbase, Widely Attributed to Israel, Raises Mideast Tensions

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