ISTANBUL (AP) — Israel did not warn the United States before it struck an air base in northern Syria this week, despite fears of an escalation with the U.S. and NATO ally Turkey, the U.S. special envoy to Syria said.
Israel usually closely coordinates its military actions with the U.S., its key backer. Washington has tried to use this influence to moderate attacks as Israel carries out operations in Syria, Gaza and Lebanon.
Tom Barrack, who also serves as ambassador to Turkey, said the attack on Tuesday on the Abu Duhur base could have been Israel “baiting the Turks … that was the serious and worrying part.”
However, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz contradicted the U.S. envoy's remarks about there being no warning, saying in a statement that Israel decided to alert senior members of the Syrian government. “Simultaneously, we transferred the intelligence reports to the relevant authorities in the U.S.,” Katz added.
In the wake of the strikes, which caused damage but no casualties, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the base was attacked because Syria was “on the verge of breaching” an agreement by allowing Turkish troops to deploy there.
Barrack said it was likely that Israel had intelligence suggesting Turkey may be bolstering its presence in the area and “a commander somewhere in the field made a decision ‘We’re not going to let that happen’… What they didn’t do is tell us or Turkey.”
He added that another possible reason for the attack on Abu Duhur, around 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of the Turkish border, was a miscommunication between the Israeli military and the country's intelligence agency.
“When they (the Turkish military) see these jets coming towards the border and they don’t know what the purpose, direction or intention is, they start to say ‘We’re going to have to scramble our own,’” Barrack said as he outlined how close Israel and Turkey came to direct confrontation.
In 2015, Turkey had shot down a Russian jet over its Syrian frontier. The ambassador’s comments were published on X late Friday by Mario Nawfal, a Lebanese-Australian entrepreneur.
Barrack also said Israel “still” occupies the Golan Heights in violation of U.N. resolutions, despite U.S. President Donald Trump's 2019 proclamation recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the territory, reversing decades of U.S. policy.
Katz, the Israeli defense minister, said the strike on the base was authorized after the “warning wasn’t heeded,” adding there were “clear intelligence reports” of Turkey’s intention to use the base “to harm Israel.” He did not provide further detail.
Barrack’s comments were “full of inaccuracies and positions that contradict" Trump’s position on the Golan Heights, the minister added.
Two Syrian officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, said on Wednesday that a Turkish delegation had visited the air base in the northwestern province of Idlib a day before the air strike to review reconstruction work underway there.
Israel had raised concerns about Turkish military activity at the air base but the U.S. concluded that was “not happening,” Barrack said.
“The unintended consequence of a mistake could be really consequential,” he added.
Turkey has been supporting Syria’s effort to rebuild its armed forces by training Syrian personnel and supplying equipment and logistical support. The two countries signed an agreement last year that formalized their military cooperation.
Turkish officials have repeatedly stated that Ankara does not consider Syria’s security separate from its own.
Israel, meanwhile, has remained suspicious of the new authorities in Damascus, led by former Islamist insurgents. Syria’s interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa has said repeatedly that he does not want a conflict with Israel.
Israel carried out hundreds of airstrikes around Syria after the fall of Bashar Assad’s government in late 2024. The Israeli military also seized control of a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone in southern Syria, which it continues to occupy.
Turkey, which recently signed a defense pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, gave no indication that it would respond militarily to the Israeli strikes in Syria, but the incident added further strain to already tense Turkish-Israeli relations.
Associated Press writer Ghaith Alsayed in Damascus, Syria, contributed to this report.
FILE - Decommissioned Syrian air force planes are seen at the Abu Duhur military air base east of Idlib, following the takeover of the area by Syrian opposition fighters on Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Omar Albam, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States and Canada, historic allies along an undefended border, fell deeper into a trade war Saturday marked by angry recriminations and new tariffs that are expected to raise prices for products in both countries.
Each side blamed the other for the collapse of negotiations in Washington late Friday, leading the U.S. to impose 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods and Canada setting Sept. 8 as the start of its retaliatory penalties.
President Donald Trump’s import taxes will hit about 5% of what Canada ships to the United States every year, ranging from hockey sticks to tongue depressors. Prime Minister Carney said Ottawa would respond with targeted tariff protection for industries exposed to the new U.S. duties, including some steel products. He also mentioned the dairy, appliance, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper and electronics sectors.
No further talks were planned. Whatever the eventual outcome, a loss of trust seems one of the earliest casualties.
Carney accused Washington of using “economic integration as a weapon” and said “its signature was written in pencil.” Resorting to the language of battle, he said his country had been “attacked” by the new American tariffs. “You’re at war when you get attacked,” he said, adding that Canada had the reserves, resilience and plan to respond.
But to Trump's chief trade negotiator, Jamieson Greer, the U.S. was compelled to act after a year of retaliation by its longtime ally.
“We’ve said enough, and so we’ve taken countermeasures. Our interest is in protecting American workers and protecting American supply chains,” the U.S. trade representative told ”Fox & Friends Weekend."
Carney said Canada had been willing to drop remaining retaliatory tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos if the U.S. substantially lowered its own, and to encourage provinces to restore U.S. alcohol sales. But he said Washington’s final demands went too far. “They asked too much and offered too little,” Carney said.
Greer said the Republican administration was offering to cut tariffs on steel, autos and lumber, “things that are sensitive for them. And they’ve always had the best deal, and they still would have an even better deal, but they didn’t want that."
As a result, he said, “We’re moving forward with measures that respond to Canadian retaliation.”
Carney said the U.S. added last-minute terms that would have reduced tariff relief for Canadian-made vehicles, restricted Canada’s ability to strike trade deals with other countries and weakened protections for language, culture and sovereignty.
He said such demands were “unacceptable.”
The breakdown in negotiations marked a sharp reversal from two days earlier, when officials from the two countries sounded as if they were headed toward a compromise.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who leads Canada’s most populous province, s province, praised Carney for rejecting the deal, saying it would have hurt Ontario’s auto, steel and manufacturing sectors. Ford urged Canada to use “every tool in our toolbox” to fight the U.S. tariffs.
The moves also call into question the future of a North American trade agreement covering the United States, Canada and Mexico that is crucial to industry in all three countries.
The political impact will likely be even bigger than the economic fallout. The countries sold each other $880 billion worth of goods and services last year.
The tariffs were initially supposed to kick in at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. Trump extended the deadline for three days to allow talks to continue, but the countries could not reach an agreement in time.
The U.S. and Canada have wrangled for decades over trade, poking each other over sore spots such as Canadian softwood lumber imports and U.S. access to Canada’s protected dairy market.
Somehow, they still managed to remain friends, allies and trading partners. Canadian soldiers fought alongside Americans in Afghanistan after 9/11. The 5,525-mile U.S.-Canada border is undefended, and nearly 330,000 people and $2 billion worth of goods cross it every day; 800,000 Canadians live in the United States.
Trump’s approach to dealing with Canada marks an extraordinary departure from the traditionally cooperative relationship between the two countries. Trump has imposed tariffs on Canadian goods in a push to bring manufacturing back to the United States and made inflammatory comments about turning Canada into America’s 51st state.
Carney said Canada had recognized that “America has changed” and that the two countries would “not return to our old relationship.”
The Canadian public is fed up. A petition to expel U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra, a Trump ally, has collected nearly 248,000 signatures since July 21. It accuses the former Republican congressman from Michigan of having “normalized’’ Trump’s talk of annexing Canada, among other things.
The two countries had good reasons to find a compromise.
Nearly 72% of Canada’s goods exports last year went to the United States. The Trump administration might be wary of imposing new tariffs — paid by U.S. importers who try to pass along the cost to consumers via higher prices — before the November’s midterm elections. American voters are already frustrated with the high cost of living.
“Canada likely wanted further sector-specific relief than the U.S. was willing to offer, or Canada’s concessions did not go far enough,'' said Ryan Majerus, a partner at King & Spalding and a former U.S. trade official. "Either way, I think both sides will be under immense pressure in the coming days to still find an off-ramp. But if Canada has agreed to also impose tariffs, the off-ramp may be even harder to find.”
Candace Laing, president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, called the tariffs “a body blow to North American competitiveness” and warned they would raise costs for Americans while threatening Canadian customers, investment and small businesses.
Trump has made tariffs the centerpiece of his second-term economic agenda. Last year, he imposed double-digit import taxes on almost every country, justifying them by declaring the long-standing U.S. trade deficit a national emergency. The Supreme Court in February ruled that he had overstepped his authority. The justices struck down the trade penalties and set the stage for the federal government to pay refunds to importers.
So Trump has looked for other legal authority to justify tariffs.
To punish Canada, he reached back to the Great Depression, invoking Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to threaten 50% tariffs on products that account for about 5% of Canadian exports to the United States.
Nearly a century ago, with the U.S. and world economies in collapse, Congress passed the 1930 tariff law, imposing taxes on imports from around the world. Known as the Smoot-Hawley tariffs after their congressional sponsors, they are notorious among economists and historians for limiting world commerce and making the Great Depression worse.
Section 338, which has never been used before to impose tariffs, authorizes the president to slap import taxes of up to 50% on imports from countries that have discriminated against U.S. businesses. No investigation is required to justify the levies. Nor is there any limit on how long they can stay in place.
The rift comes as the United States, Mexico and Canada are trying to renew a trade agreement that Trump negotiated in his first term and once praised as a triumph. The United States has begun formal talks with Mexico over revamping the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, known as USMCA. But talks with Canada have not begun and escalating trade conflict casts doubt on whether they will.
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Gillies reported from Toronto. Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.
Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and chief trade negotiator Janice Charette listen as Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks about Canada's response to new U.S. tariffs during a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Saturday, Aug. 22, 2026. (Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press via AP)
Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks about Canada's response to new U.S. tariffs during a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Saturday, Aug. 22, 2026. (Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press via AP)
President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before boarding Air Force One, Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md., en route to South Carolina. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Rolled coils of steel sit in the yard at the ArcelorMittal Dofasco steel plant in Hamilton, Ont. on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (Nick Iwanyshyn /The Canadian Press via AP)
FILE - Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney and President Donald Trump hold a press conference at the White House in Washington, D.C., Oct. 7, 2025. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP, File)
Rolled coils of steel sit in the yard at the ArcelorMittal Dofasco steel plant in Hamilton, Ont. on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (Nick Iwanyshyn /The Canadian Press via AP)
President Donald Trump walks on the Ellipse as he arrives on Marine One near the White House, Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
