Mossad chief Gofman met Syria’s foreign minister in Amman

By Patrick Lancier

Amman, August 23, 2026. Mossad director Roman Gofman sat down in Jordan with Syria’s foreign minister, Asaad al-Shaibani. Axios reported the meeting first, citing three sources. It is the highest-level public contact between Israel and Syria since Bashar al-Assad fell in December 2024. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on the encounter. Neither Jerusalem nor Damascus confirmed it. The United States has spent more than a year trying to broker a security arrangement, Reuters notes. Washington wants a channel. Israel showed up — and it had already defended itself when a warning was ignored.

Abu al-Duhur: Israel hit a Turkish radar threat, not the talks

Five days earlier, on August 18, Israeli aircraft struck the disused Abu al-Duhur airbase in Idlib province, near the Turkish border. This was not a raid to wreck diplomacy. Two sources told the Jerusalem Post the strike was meant to stop a Turkish radar and air-defense system, manned by Turkish troops, from going in. Israel had already told Washington that intelligence showed Turkey preparing to send radar, troops and air defenses to a Syrian base, KAN News reported, via the Post. Defense Minister Israel Katz said he and Netanyahu ordered a direct warning to senior Syrian officials “in an attempt to prevent the move.” “After the request went unanswered, the prime minister and I authorized the IDF to carry out the strike, which commenced successfully.” Katz said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “was caught with his hand in the cookie jar and was forced to back down.”

A spokesman for Netanyahu’s office said Syria had been “on the verge of breaching” an agreed security status quo by allowing Turkish troops onto the base, “chose to ignore” Israel’s warnings, and that Erdogan has made “open calls” for Israel’s destruction, the Jerusalem Post reported. Syrian state television, via the Associated Press, said eight strikes hit the runway and reported no casualties.

Damascus says it does not trust Israel. Israel has grounds.

Al-Shaibani told Reuters, the day before Amman, that Damascus saw a “historic opportunity” for diplomacy and then said: “We do not trust Israel currently.” That is the Syrian line. It is not the verdict of this article. Israel spent years watching Assad’s Syria host Iran and Hezbollah. It has reason not to trust a capital that, on Israeli intelligence, was opening the door to a Turkish radar on the same northern flank. Al-Shaibani told Axios there was “no intention to establish a Turkish base there, nor to establish a permanent Turkish military presence or deploy Turkish forces.” He said Israel struck after that message had been delivered. Jerusalem’s account is the opposite: the warning went out; Damascus did not answer; the air force did.

The room in Amman, with Washington in the frame

On August 14, before the strike, Gofman had already spoken with al-Shaibani by phone, The New Arab reported, citing diplomatic sources. The subject was already Turkey’s military footprint in Syria. N12 said Syria’s general and military intelligence chiefs sat in the Amman room with Gofman and al-Shaibani. A source told the Jerusalem Post the talks “went well.” AFP, citing a diplomat and a Syrian government source, said they discussed a “special operations room” in Jordan under U.S. supervision to prevent a clash inside Syria, including one involving Turkey, The Hindu reported. The United States wants that phone to ring. Israel picked it up. It has not said it will stop hitting what it treats as a threat.

The same PMO spokesman put the map in figures Israel will live with: Israeli forces hold about one-tenth of one percent of Syrian territory along the border; Turkey, he said, has a “substantial military presence” in about 5 percent of Syria. “More than a year ago, Israel and Syria reached an understanding to maintain the security status quo and to keep this border calm. Syria breached that understanding.” “We are not looking for escalation. But neither Turkey nor any other country is going to threaten the state of Israel.” AFP recalled that Israel and Syria’s new authorities had accepted an intelligence-sharing mechanism in January. Amman reopened a live line. A security agreement is not signed. Diplomacy and self-defense are not opposites. In Amman, Israel did both.

Mossad chief Gofman met Syria’s foreign minister in Amman