There are conflicts that begin with a bombing, and others that simply find in a bombing the opportunity to become visible. The Israeli attack on the Abu al-Duhur airbase in northwestern Syria belongs to the second category. Israel claims it acted to prevent Turkey from establishing a military presence there capable of altering the strategic balance of the region. Ankara and Damascus deny that such a project existed and assert that the facilities were being rehabilitated for the Syrian Air Force.
The factual discrepancy matters, but it does not alone explain the crisis. The real problem is that Israel and Turkey have begun to see each other as obstacles to their respective strategic projects in post-Bashar al-Assad Syria. The document provided for this analysis precisely describes this dynamic as a security dilemma: an activity interpreted by Turkey as defensive cooperation may be viewed by Israel as the first phase of a hostile military infrastructure.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summarized the Israeli position with an unequivocal warning: “We will not tolerate the Turkish army advancing south, because that threatens us”. His Defense Minister, Israel Katz, accused Recep Tayyip Erdogan of dragging Turkey into a “dangerous adventure” in Syria. Ankara responded by calling the accusations unsustainable and denying any intention to establish a permanent base. The Syrian Foreign Minister, Asaad al-Shaibani, stated that there was no plan for a Turkish deployment and that the installation was meant to regain its function under Syrian sovereignty.
The sequence is revealing. Days before the attack, the head of Mossad, Roman Gofman, had spoken with Al-Shaibani about the growing Turkish military activity in Syria, including possible supplies of weapons and drones. Then came the bombing. Reuters has confirmed that Washington is now working on a de-escalation mechanism between Israel, Turkey, and Syria. The U.S. envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, called the Israeli action “unnecessary escalation”.
This is therefore not a circumstantial dispute. The fall of Assad shifted the Syrian center of gravity. For years, Israel had considered Iran and Hezbollah as its main adversaries in Syrian territory. Now Iran has lost much of the position it built during the civil war, and Turkey has occupied the vacated space. Ankara supports the new government of Ahmed al-Sharaa, participates in the reconstruction of the Syrian armed forces, and intends for Syria to function again as a territorially integrated and politically stable state. Israel views this perspective with far greater distrust.
Analyst Ömer Özkizilcik, a research associate at the Atlantic Council, argues that Ankara and Israel have fundamentally opposed visions for post-Assad Syria: Turkey seeks to strengthen a centralized Syrian state, while Israel aims to prevent the emergence of a military structure that could become a threat and prefers to maintain a weak and fragmented Syrian environment. This divergence helps to understand why Abu al-Duhur is more important than the damaged missile landing strip.
The question is how far escalation can go. An open war between Israel and Turkey remains unlikely. Both countries possess enough military power to inflict considerable damage on each other, but they also have too many incentives to avoid direct confrontation. Turkey is a NATO member and has the second-largest army in the organization; Israel has a strategically extraordinarily close relationship with the United States. A war between the two would force Washington to manage an almost impossible contradiction: supporting Israel without breaking ties with Turkey.
The most plausible risk is not a declared war, but a succession of incidents. An Israeli strike that kills Turkish soldiers, an air interception, the accidental downing of a aircraft, or the destruction of an installation used by Ankara could provoke a limited response that, in turn, would require Israel to respond. Precisely to prevent this dynamic, a military communication mechanism already exists, but the crisis shows that it needs to be strengthened. The goal of de-escalation is not to reconcile Israel and Turkey, but to prevent two armies operating in the same space from inadvertently ending up in combat.
The political context also does not help. Netanyahu faces the legislative elections on October 27, and the rivalry with Erdogan has begun to become part of his electoral discourse. Foreign policy thus becomes domestic politics: presenting Turkey as an emerging threat allows the Israeli government to reinforce the argument that the country is surrounded by enemies and needs experienced leadership in security matters. At the same time, Erdogan can depict Israel as the power trying to prevent the reconstruction of Syria and extending the Gaza war to the north. The rhetoric fuels a cycle in which each leader has internal incentives not to appear weak.
The situation takes on even greater dimensions after the defense agreement signed on August 7 in Mecca between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. The pact establishes that an attack against one of its members will be considered an aggression against all three and includes greater military cooperation, training, intelligence, and technology.
It would be an exaggeration to call it an “Islamic NATO”. The signing governments themselves have insisted that it is not aimed at any specific country. Saudi Arabia has expressly denied that the agreement is related to a nuclear arms race. But its strategic importance is undeniable: it combines Saudi financial power, Turkish military industry, geographical position, and Pakistan's military capacity, the only Muslim state with nuclear weapons.
For Israel, the issue is not necessarily that the alliance will intervene militarily in its defense but that it alters the deterrence calculation. Until now, Israel could study Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan separately. The pact introduces the possibility of these capabilities beginning to coordinate. This does not mean there is an automatic chain of military response or, much less, a nuclear commitment. But it forces Israel to incorporate a new variable into its strategic calculations.
Here arises the most troubling question: the nuclear risk. Israel maintains a policy of ambiguity and has never officially acknowledged having atomic weapons, although the international community widely considers that it possesses a nuclear arsenal; public estimates place its stockpile at around 90 warheads.
However, the possibility of Israel employing nuclear weapons against Turkey in a potential war is extraordinarily remote. There is currently no situation that would suggest such a decision. Israeli nuclear weapons fundamentally serve as existential deterrence, and their use against a NATO member state would entail a catastrophic rupture of the international strategic order.
Much more important is the question of what would happen afterwards. Would Pakistan respond with nuclear weapons under the Mecca agreement? The most likely answer is no. Pakistan's nuclear doctrine is essentially built around India, and there is no official declaration that places Israel as a nuclear target. An analysis by the Arms Control Association emphasizes that Islamabad has maintained its arsenal as a deterrent instrument against India and has not announced a change of doctrine regarding Israel. A study by Georgetown also considers it highly unlikely that Pakistan would use nuclear weapons to defend Saudi Arabia, precisely because its nuclear deterrence is designed to contain India.
The nuclear threat, therefore, operates more as a factor of indirect deterrence than as a likely combat scenario. The real danger would be if a regional war began to modify the security doctrines of the actors. Turkey is already publicly debating the advisability of developing its own nuclear capability, and some Turkish officials have warned about the risks stemming from the deterioration of the non-proliferation regime. If Israel were to use nuclear weapons, even in an extreme scenario, the pressure for other Middle Eastern countries to reconsider their own options would increase dramatically.
Washington then appears as the decisive actor. The United States has no interest in allowing a war between Israel and Turkey. The Trump administration needs Israel as a strategic partner but also needs Turkey for its geographical position, army, military industry, and influence over Syria. The White House itself seems to have understood that a confrontation between both allies would be strategically ruinous. Hence Barrack's intervention and the creation of the de-escalation mechanism.
NATO faces an even more delicate dilemma. Article 5 does not automatically turn a war initiated by one member into a war for the whole Alliance. Moreover, Israel is not a member of the organization. If Turkey were directly attacked by Israel, the North Atlantic Council would have to determine the circumstances and appropriate measures. But Washington would hardly allow a bilateral crisis to transform into a confrontation between NATO and Israel.
The most likely outcome is, therefore, a diplomacy of containment. The United States will try to convince Israel that its concerns about Turkish expansion in Syria should be managed through verifiable limits and not through preemptive attacks. Ankara, for its part, will need to demonstrate that its military cooperation with Damascus does not constitute the covert construction of an offensive platform against Israel.
Syria is the board where all these contradictions converge. Al-Sharaa needs Turkey to reconstruct his state, but he also needs a security agreement with Israel and U.S. support. Israel wants to prevent Syria from becoming a hostile military platform, but its attacks may precisely weaken the Syrian government that Washington and Ankara consider necessary to stabilize the country. Turkey wants to consolidate its influence, but an open confrontation with Israel could jeopardize its relationship with the United States and complicate its position within NATO.
The paradox is that all actors have reasons to avoid war and, simultaneously, reasons to continue increasing their military power. This is the classic security dilemma that turns regional crises into international dangers. The rivalry between Israel and Turkey does not seem today to be heading toward an open war. But it is no longer a fleeting dispute either. Syria has become the place where two regional order projects clash.
The decisive question will be who can impose the rules of this new balance. If Washington manages to establish reliable mechanisms of communication and delineate the areas of operation of both armies, Abu al-Duhur could end up being remembered as a warning. If it fails, the attack may become the first episode of a much more dangerous military competition. In a Middle East cut by wars, new alliances, and nuclear arsenals, the difference between a warning and a war may paradoxically depend on the adversaries' ability to keep talking when everything seems to push them to stop doing so.
Adalberto Agozino is a Doctor in Political Science, International Analyst, and Professor at the University of Buenos Aires
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