By Ingrid "Shortwave" Frost
Early Tuesday, Israeli warplanes hit an air base in northwest Syria. Israel said the goal was blunt: stop Turkish troops from setting up there. Turkey has close ties to the Syrian government and has been helping its military rebuild.
Damascus did not take it quietly. Syrian officials called the strikes "an unjustified act of aggression" that put regional security at risk, according to Al Jazeera. The base sits in territory where Turkish and Israeli interests have been colliding for months, each side wary of the other gaining a foothold as Syria's post-war order takes shape.
The United States, for its part, did not back Israel's move. A US statement condemned what it called an "unnecessary escalation," the BBC reported — a rare public daylight between Washington and Jerusalem on a Syria strike.
The episode lands in a region already crowded with competing patrons. Turkey has spent the past year positioning itself as a security partner to Syria's new government. Israel has repeatedly used air power to enforce red lines near its northern border, hitting targets it deems threats regardless of who put them there. Now the two US allies are pulling in different directions over the same stretch of Syrian territory, with Washington caught trying to referee.
What happens next depends on whether Turkey presses ahead with any deployment plans despite the strike, and whether Israel is prepared to hit Syrian soil again to stop it. Neither government has signaled it's backing down. [Further detail on casualties or damage from the strike was not available in the reporting reviewed for this article.]
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— Compiled from reporting by NPR News and the BBC.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."