By Qamar Bashir
Press Secretary to the President (Rtd)
Former Press Minister, Embassy of Pakistan to France
Former Press Attaché to Malaysia
Former MD, SRBC | Michigan, USA
Israel’s latest airstrikes on Syria’s Abu al-Duhur airbase have opened a much larger question than the fate of one military facility. They raise a fundamental issue about sovereignty in the emerging Middle East: can Israel legitimately determine which countries Syria may cooperate with militarily, and how far can the doctrine of preventive security be stretched before it becomes an assertion of regional veto power?
On August 18, Israeli aircraft struck Abu al-Duhur airbase in Idlib, damaging its runway without reported casualties. Israel said Syria was about to violate what it described as a security “status quo” by permitting Turkish troops to deploy there. Yet Syria subsequently denied that a Turkish base or permanent deployment was planned. Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said Turkish officers had visited the facility as part of military cooperation and training, while the largely empty airfield was being rehabilitated for the Syrian Air Force.
This distinction is crucial. There is a considerable difference between Syria rebuilding its own armed forces with Turkish assistance and Turkey establishing an offensive military platform directed against Israel.
That makes Israel’s decision particularly consequential. Every sovereign state possesses the right, within international law and its treaty obligations, to develop diplomatic, economic and security relationships with other states.
Syria therefore has legitimate grounds to seek foreign assistance in rebuilding institutions devastated by years of conflict. Turkey is an obvious potential partner because of geography, its substantial military capabilities, its existing influence in northern Syria and its relationship with the post-Assad government.
Syria has suffered enormously through more than a decade of war. A country once known for its historic cities, cultural richness, educated population and considerable human potential was devastated, its infrastructure shattered and millions of its citizens displaced internally or driven abroad.
The new Syrian government consequently faces the enormous task of rebuilding not only roads, airports and public institutions but also its army, air force, border security and national security structures.
For such an undertaking, cooperation with established regional militaries is natural. Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and other friendly states could potentially contribute expertise, but geography and Turkey’s longstanding involvement in Syria make Ankara an especially practical partner.
Israel sees the situation differently. Its government argues that October 7 fundamentally changed its security calculations and that it can no longer tolerate potentially hostile military capabilities developing near its borders.
There is an additional contradiction. Israel continues to control the Golan Heights, territory captured from Syria in 1967 and annexed by Israel in 1981—a move not recognized by most of the international community. Against this background, Israel’s attempt to dictate what Syria may do elsewhere within Syrian territory inevitably raises serious questions about sovereignty and consistency.
Washington’s reaction makes the latest episode even more significant. U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria Tom Barrack publicly characterized the Israeli strikes as an “unnecessary escalation that does not advance regional stability.” Barrack subsequently explained that American and Syrian officials believed dialogue over the facility was continuing and that available information did not indicate aggressive intent by Syria or Turkey.
That criticism matters precisely because Washington remains Israel’s most important strategic partner. It suggests that even within the American-Israeli relationship there are limits to agreement over how far preventive military action should extend. More importantly, it demonstrates the danger of substituting bombing for diplomacy when communication channels already exist.
None of this means Israeli security concerns should be dismissed. Israel has legitimate security interests, just as Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and every other country does. But legitimate concern and unlimited military discretion are fundamentally different concepts. Security cannot become a doctrine under which one country acquires the right to supervise the sovereign relationships of an entire region.
More dangerous still would be allowing the Israeli-Turkish confrontation to become military. Turkey is not a non-state armed organization or a militarily shattered neighboring country. It is a major regional power and NATO member possessing one of the alliance’s largest armed forces, an expanding domestic defense industry, sophisticated drones, missiles and a capable air force.
A direct confrontation between Turkey and Israel would therefore represent an entirely different strategic equation. It could draw NATO, the United States and other regional actors into an extraordinarily complicated crisis. Neither Israel nor Turkey would benefit from transforming Syria into the battlefield on which their competing strategic visions are settled.
The nuclear question therefore cannot be diluted into a vague appeal for worldwide disarmament while ignoring the immediate strategic imbalance inside the Middle East. Israel is widely believed to be the region’s only nuclear-armed state, while the surrounding Arab states do not possess nuclear weapons and Iran has faced extraordinary military, economic and diplomatic pressure even though it has not publicly crossed the threshold into an acknowledged nuclear-weapons capability.
If uranium enrichment, latent capability or even the possibility of future weaponization is considered sufficient justification for sanctions, coercion or preventive military action against Iran, then a far stricter standard should logically apply to an existing undeclared nuclear arsenal.
The principle must be consistent: one regional state cannot be permitted to demand that all others remain permanently non-nuclear while retaining its own nuclear deterrent beyond meaningful international scrutiny.
This imbalance becomes even more dangerous when the state possessing that capability repeatedly uses military force beyond its borders and increasingly invokes preventive security doctrines against neighboring countries.
Israel’s nuclear arsenal should therefore no longer be treated as an exceptional or untouchable issue. It should become a central subject of international non-proliferation diplomacy, inspection, verification and eventual disarmament.
The broader principle should of course ultimately apply to every nuclear-armed power—including the United States, Russia, China and others—because nuclear weapons are inherently capable of mutual catastrophe. But in the present Middle Eastern context, consistency demands that the rules applied so aggressively to Iran cannot stop at Israel’s borders.
This issue becomes particularly important because nuclear capability can provide a state with an extraordinary sense of strategic protection. Israel’s conventional military strength is formidable, but its presumed nuclear deterrent represents an ultimate security guarantee. That makes international responsibility even greater. Nuclear weapons must never become an implicit shield behind which increasingly expansive doctrines of preventive military intervention can develop.
The world should therefore resist both nuclear proliferation and nuclear exceptionalism. A sustainable Middle Eastern security architecture cannot be based upon one state possessing an undeclared nuclear deterrent while potential nuclear development elsewhere becomes grounds for sanctions, threats or military attacks. Rules acquire legitimacy only when they are applied consistently.
At the same time, the fundamental political disputes producing insecurity cannot be bombed away. The unresolved Palestinian question, Gaza, the West Bank, Syria’s territorial integrity and the wider competition among regional powers will continue generating instability unless addressed politically.
Israel therefore faces an important strategic choice. It can continue attempting to expand its security perimeter through military superiority and preventive strikes, or it can help construct a regional order in which its security is protected through reciprocal recognition of sovereignty and negotiated arrangements.
Bombing an airfield can destroy a runway. It cannot eliminate Turkey’s geographical importance, Syria’s need for reconstruction, Palestinian grievances or the strategic interests of neighboring states. Nor can military power indefinitely substitute for political accommodation.
Real security cannot be built by deciding whom Syria may befriend. It can only emerge when Israel, Syria, Turkey and the wider region accept the same fundamental principle: every state deserves security, every sovereign country deserves independence in its foreign relations, and no nation—however militarily powerful—should possess an exceptional right to impose its security doctrine upon all others.
