The United States will keep backing Syria’s government and has no “Plan B” to working with it to unite the war‑scarred country back together, still reeling from years of civil war and wracked by new sectarian violence, US envoy Tom Barrack said on Monday.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Barrack – Washington’s ambassador to Türkiye and special envoy for Syria, who is also on a short assignment in Lebanon – called last week’s Israeli strikes inside Syria “badly timed” and said they had “complicated efforts to stabilize the region.”
Barrack spoke in Beirut after more than a week of clashes in Sweida province between Druze militiamen and Sunni Bedouin tribes.
Over the weekend he brokered what he described as a limited ceasefire between Syria and Israel, aimed only at halting the fighting in Sweida. Syrian government troops have since redeployed in the area and evacuated civilians from both communities on Monday, he said.
Barrack told the AP that “the killing, the revenge, the massacres on both sides” are “intolerable,” but that “the current government of Syria, in my opinion, has conducted themselves as best they can as a nascent government with very few resources to address the multiplicity of issues that arise in trying to bring a diverse society together.”
Regarding Israel’s strikes on Syria, Barrack said: “The United States was not asked, nor did they participate in that decision, nor was it the United States’ responsibility in matters that Israel feels is for its own self-defense.”
However, he said Israel’s intervention “creates another very confusing chapter” and “came at a very bad time.”
Prior to the violence in Sweida, Israel and Syria had been in talks over security matters, while the Trump administration had been pushing them to move toward full normalization of diplomatic relations.
When the latest fighting erupted, “Israel’s view was that south of Damascus was this questionable zone, so that whatever happened militarily in that zone needed to be agreed upon and discussed with them,” Barrack said. “The new government (in Syria) coming in was not exactly of that belief.”
The ceasefire announced Saturday between Syria and Israel is a limited agreement addressing only the conflict in Sweida, he said. It does not address broader issues including Israel’s contention that the area south of Damascus should be a demilitarized zone.
In the discussions leading up to the ceasefire, Barrack said “both sides did the best they can” to reach agreement on specific questions related to the movement of Syrian forces and equipment from Damascus to Sweida.
He suggested that Israel would prefer to see Syria fragmented and divided rather than a strong central state in control of the country.
Later Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz posted on X that Israel’s strikes “were the only way to stop the massacre of the Druze in Syria, the brothers of our brothers the Israeli Druze”.
Katz added: “Anyone who criticizes the attacks is unaware of the facts,” he continued. It was not clear if he was responding to Barrack’s comments.
Damascus has been negotiating with the Kurdish forces that control much of northeast Syria to implement an agreement that would merge the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces with the new national army.
