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U.S. Ambassador to Türkiye and Syria Special Envoy Tom Barrack stated on Friday he personally led five Trump-mandated discussions between Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani and Israeli National Security Adviser Ron Dermer, predicting that a non-aggression and normalization agreement between Syria and Israel would come "sooner than Lebanon."
He described Israel's ongoing cross-border incursions into Syrian territory and calling Syria's policy of non-retaliation "brilliant."
Barrack was unequivocal in his assessment of Syria's conduct since Ahmed al-Sharaa's government took power on Dec. 8, 2024.
"Syria under the Sharaa regime has never fired a shot at Israel. Quite the opposite. President Sharaa has said time and time again, there are no issues with Israel," he noted.
"We don't want an adversarial issue with Israel. We don't want to be at war with Israel. We want to work toward a non-aggression agreement and a normalization agreement," Barrack said at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum.
He said Syria had "showed tremendous patience" in the face of continued Israeli cross-border incursions and that the non-engagement strategy was strategically sound.
"Syria was brilliant in not engaging in that fight. There's no purpose in it," he said.
Barrack described Israel's position toward Syria in blunt terms, noting that Netanyahu had made his posture explicit after Oct. 7.
"Netanyahu was very clear in all of his words that after Oct. 7, everything has changed. He doesn't care about borders. He doesn't care about boundaries. He doesn't care about the 67 borderline. He doesn't care about the 74 borderline. He doesn't care about the December 8th line," he noted.
"The incursions are constant. Israel is coming across those lines every time they see a convoy, because there's still no trust between the two entities," Barrack said.
He said Israel's concern centered on the Druze population along the Syrian-Israeli border, which Netanyahu has framed as "cousins of Israel", a logic that led to early Israeli cross-border moves following incidents in Suwayda at the start of the Sharaa period.
Barrack disclosed that he had personally facilitated five discussions between Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani and Israeli National Security Adviser Ron Dermer on behalf of Trump.
"I was privileged on behalf of the President to lead five discussions, which were incredible, between Foreign Minister Shaibani, who's a brilliant young man, and Ron Dermer on behalf of Prime Minister Netanyahu. We got very close. It evaporated. We set up a fusion," he noted.
"We're still having discussions," Barrack said.
He attributed the breakdown partly to the broader regional war creating a diplomatic "timeout," but expressed confidence the track would resume. "We'll get there," he said.
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Barrack was direct in predicting the sequencing of normalization agreements in the region.
"My bet is we'll get to a non-aggression and normalization agreement with Syria sooner than Lebanon," he said, implying that Lebanon's situation, with Hezbollah still present and a ceasefire just hours old, represented a far more complex negotiating environment than al-Sharaa's Damascus.
On the Lebanon ceasefire that came into effect Thursday night, Barrack called it a "step in the right direction" but explicitly named its limits.
"The brilliance of what happened yesterday is it stopped senseless killing. But there are two people missing from that table, Hezbollah and Iran. So what happened was a step in the right direction. Now the real work begins. We need a path with Hezbollah. The path has to be not killing Hezbollah," he said, calling the new Lebanese leadership of Aoun, Salam and Berri "the best set of leaders we've had."
He also addressed the self-defense clause in the ceasefire agreement, similar to language in the November 2024 agreement, saying the real work was now trust-building.
"Everybody has been equally untrustworthy. It's baby steps," Barrack concluded.
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