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Tom Hussain

Israel’s escalating campaign to stop Syria rebuilding its military with Turkish help looks set to backfire, after Damascus signalled it was considering joining the new mutual-defence pact formed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Securing a Washington-mediated security deal with Israel was still Damascus’ top priority, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani reportedly told Roman Gofman, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, at a meeting in Amman on Sunday.
Such a deal would see Israeli forces withdraw from areas of southwest Syria they have occupied since the Assad regime collapsed in December 2024.
But according to the official Syrian Arab News Agency, Shaibani made clear that any agreement would not come at the price of capitulating to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demands for “freedom of action” throughout Syria.
Syria was a sovereign state with “the full right to rebuild and develop its national army and determine its alliances and partnerships in accordance with its national interests”, Shaibani reportedly said, adding that Damascus would not accept any arrangement that restricted those rights.

The Amman talks were hastily arranged by the United States after Netanyahu ordered air strikes last Tuesday on a Syrian airbase near the Turkish border. He claimed the strikes pre-empted a planned Turkish deployment at the Abu Al-Duhur military airfield in northwest Idlib province – an allegation rejected as false by Ankara, Damascus and US special regional envoy Tom Barrack.
Netanyahu described the strikes as a warning to Turkey against expanding its military footprint in northwest Syria southward towards Israel.
Barrack countered that they could easily have provoked a clash between the regional powers – a view echoed by other observers, who warned that Israel’s aggressive actions in Syria risked becoming a “self-fulfilling prophecy”.
Indeed, the day after the bombing, Shaibani signalled Syria’s defiance by travelling to Pakistan for talks that encompassed the possibility of joining the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement.

Speaking to reporters in Islamabad on Thursday, he said Damascus had yet to reach a final decision on membership of the alliance, which Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia formed on August 7.
Coming just before his meeting with Israel’s intelligence chief, the message was clear: Damascus would do whatever it judged necessary to prevent the escalating turf war between Israel and Turkey from disrupting Syria’s fragile recovery after almost 14 years of civil war.
Syrian state media said Sunday’s talks addressed “efforts to bridge differences between Turkey and Israel and ensure that tensions between the two countries do not spill over onto Syrian territory”.
Israel’s anxiety
Israeli-American geopolitical analyst Shaiel Ben-Ephraim said the Mecca pact was “definitely playing a part in Israel’s anxiety over Syria”.
Israel recognised that American power in the region was “waning”, that Saudi Arabia was “turning away” from normalising relations with it and that Turkey and Pakistan were “both hostile states”, he said.
“Together, this alliance is stronger than Israel,” said Ben-Ephraim, who is a senior analyst at strategic advisory firm Atlas Global Strategies. “There is a danger that Israel is bringing on strategic encirclement in the region.”
He added that the pact could eventually supplant the US-brokered Abraham Accords as the region’s prevailing security framework – a shift that “would make Turkish bases in Syria all the more dangerous”.

Giorgio Cafiero, CEO of the Washington-based risk consultancy Gulf State Analytics, said Syria’s possible accession must be seen in the context of a pact that “constitutes an effort on the part of its signatories to establish a new regional order for the post-Iran war period in which Tel Aviv is checked”.
Israel has not officially reacted to the alliance’s formation, but Cafiero said it should prompt Israeli leaders to conclude that the cost of attacking any of the three states – particularly Turkey – was now higher than before.
Yoni Ben Menachem, a senior Middle East analyst at the Jerusalem Centre for Security and Foreign Affairs, said Israeli officials viewed the Mecca pact as a strategic development capable of gradually altering the regional balance of power.
In a research paper published the same day as the Abu Al-Duhur strikes, Menachem – a former head of the Israeli Broadcasting Authority – wrote that Israel’s primary concern was that the trilateral alliance could become “the nucleus of a broader regional framework”, eventually joined by Egypt and other Arab and Muslim states, including Syria.

In such a scenario, Israel could find itself facing an independent regional bloc with formidable military, economic and strategic capabilities – one that “does not necessarily rely on the United States and does not necessarily regard Israel’s military superiority as a regional asset”.
Menachem said this prospect had pushed Israel’s political establishment to consider building “a network of countervailing alliances” to balance the “emerging Sunni axis”.
Retired Israeli Defence Forces colonel Hanan Shai warned against pursuing such counter-alliances, calling the approach a “mistake”.
Writing a paper published last Tuesday by the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, Shai noted that India had long resisted joining any mutual-defence pact, Greece could not align against fellow Nato member Turkey, and Arab states such as the United Arab Emirates would be reluctant to join a bloc “defined from the outset by its opposition to Turkey”.
Instead, Shai – now a lecturer in political science and international relations at Bar-Ilan University – said Israel should build “an organisation for security and prosperity” around functioning economic infrastructure, centred on reviving the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor: a US-backed proposal for a network of ports, railways, energy pipelines and data cables connecting the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean via the UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel.
Rival routes
Here too, there was room for both cooperation and confrontation, analysts told This Week in Asia.
Ben-Ephraim drew a direct link between Israel’s escalation in Syria and recent moves by the US, Turkey and Gulf Arab states to turn Syria into an alternative energy and logistics corridor to the Gulf, in response to Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz.
Although officially aimed at Turkey, he said last Tuesday’s strikes also demonstrated “Israel’s ability to disrupt any Syria-routed corridor it doesn’t control”.
Israel framed both Turkey’s military role in Syria and recent agreements to rebuild an Ottoman-era railway connecting Turkey to Saudi Arabia via Jordan and Syria “as security-driven rather than economic sabotage”, Ben-Ephraim said.
“But the two interests complement each other, and since it [Israel] sees Turkey and Syria as geopolitical rivals, their economic success is also viewed as a negative development,” he said.
Nir T. Boms, a counterterrorism expert and research fellow at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Centre, had a more optimistic outlook, seeing potential for “a win-win formula with a combined route that will use both the Israeli and the Syrian hubs” – potentially even extending to Gaza.
This could “actually serve as the potential for de-escalation and not just for conflict build-up”, Boms said.


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Middle East

Israel’s strikes push Syria towards Mecca defence pact membership

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani (left) shakes hands with his Pakistani counterpart Ishaq Dar in Islamabad on Thursday. Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan / AFP

Amman, Jordan, where Syria’s foreign minister held talks with the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency on Sunday. Photo: Xinhua

A satellite image shows craters on the runways of Abu Al-Duhur airbase on August 19 after an Israeli attack. Photo: Pleiades Neo © Airbus DS 2026/Reuters

(From left) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif at the signing of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement on August 7. Photo: PPI/Zuma Press Wire/dpa

An Israeli tank drives along the ceasefire line between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Syria on Thursday. Photo: Reuters

Israel-Turkey tensions rise after Netanyahu orders strikes on Syrian airbase

An Israeli Air Force F-15D Eagle fighter aircraft. Israel bombed a military airfield in Syria near the Turkish border earlier this week. Photo: AFP 

A satellite image shows craters on the runways of Abu Al-Duhur airbase near Syria’s Aleppo after an Israeli attack on Tuesday. Photo: Pleiades Neo © Airbus DS 2026/Reuters

The Abu Al-Duhur airbase in Syria seen following Tuesday’s air strikes by Israel. Photo: Reuters

US special envoy for Syria and Iraq and ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack speaks during a UN Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East at the UN headquarters in New York in March. Photo: Reuters

An Israeli fighter jet flies over southern Lebanon in April. On Tuesday, Israel bombed a military airfield in Syria near the Turkish border. Photo: AFP

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a press conference in Ankara, Turkey, earlier in August. Photo: EPA

Syria’s US$216 billion rebuild offers a Hormuz alternative

US President Donald Trump (right) shakes hands with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on the sidelines of the Nato summit in Ankara, Turkey, on July 8. Photo: Reuters

Construction work is seen at a new mixed-use development project near Umayyad Square in Damascus, Syria, on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

A worker unloads oil from trucks arriving from Iraq at Syria’s Baniyas oil terminal in May. Syria and Iraq aim to rebuild a moribund pipeline connecting Iraq’s oilfield in Kirkuk to the port of Baniyas. Photo: Reuters

The Syrian flag flies at the Umayyad Square in Damascus. After 14 years of civil war, the country’s infrastructure mostly lies in ruins. Photo: AFP

Shopkeepers wait for customers near the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus on July 9. Syria’s post-war economy needs an estimated US$216 billion to rebuild. Photo: AFP

How Saudi Arabia-Turkey-Pakistan defence pact acts as ‘insurance’ over US disengagement

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (centre), flanked by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left) and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, signing a joint defence agreement in Mecca on Friday. Photo: Turkish Presidency Press Office/AFP


A Lebanese man holds a piece of shrapnel in a crater caused by an Israeli air strike in the village of Burj al-Shamali, Lebanon, on Thursday. Photo: AP

A destroyed building in Tehran seen in April following US and Israeli strikes. Photo: Xinhua

Small boats sail near container ships anchoring near the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb off Yemen’s coast in the Gulf of Aden on Thursday. Photo: AFP

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Air strikes intended to curb Turkish expansion risk triggering the very encirclement Israel fears, analysts say


Air strikes intended to curb Turkish expansion risk triggering the very encirclement Israel fears, analysts say.


Israel’s strikes push Syria towards Mecca defence pact membership

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Air strikes intended to curb Turkish expansion risk triggering the very encirclement Israel fears, analysts say

Air strikes intended to curb Turkish expansion risk triggering the very encirclement Israel fears, analysts say