Syria believed it had green light from US, Israel to deploy troops to Sweida

By Timour Azhari, Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Maya Gebeily

DAMASCUS/BEIRUT (Reuters) -Syria's government misread how Israel would respond to its troops deploying to the country's south this week, encouraged by U.S. messaging that Syria should be governed as a centralized state, eight sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Israel carried out strikes on Syrian troops and on Damascus on Wednesday in an escalation that took the Islamist-led leadership by surprise, the sources said, after government forces were accused of killing scores of people in the Druze city of Sweida.

Damascus believed it had a green light from both the U.S. and Israel to dispatch its forces south despite months of Israeli warnings not to do so, according to the sources, which include Syrian political and military officials, two diplomats, and regional security sources.

That understanding was based on public and private comments from U.S. special envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack, as well as on nascent security talks with Israel, the sources said. Barrack has called for Syria to be centrally administered as "one country" without autonomous zones.

Syria's understanding of U.S. and Israeli messages regarding its troop deployment to the south has not been previously reported.

A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on private diplomatic discussions but said the United States supported the territorial unity of Syria. "The Syrian state has an obligation to protect all Syrians, including minority groups," the spokesperson said, urging the Syrian government to hold perpetrators of violence accountable.

In response to Reuters questions, a senior official from Syria's ministry of foreign affairs denied that Barrack's comments had influenced the decision to deploy troops, which was made based on "purely national considerations" and with the aim of "stopping the bloodshed, protecting civilians and preventing the escalation of civil conflict".

Damascus sent troops and tanks to Sweida province on Monday to quell fighting between Bedouin tribes and armed factions within the Druze community - a minority that follows a religion derived from Islam, with followers in Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

Syrian forces entering the city came under fire from Druze militia, according to Syrian sources.

Subsequent violence attributed to Syrian troops, including field executions and the humiliation of Druze civilians, triggered Israeli strikes on Syrian security forces, the defense ministry in Damascus and the environs of the presidential palace, according to two sources, including a senior Gulf Arab official.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel intervened to block Syrian troops from entering southern Syria - which Israel has publicly said should be a demilitarized zone - and to uphold a longstanding commitment to protect the Druze.

Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has vowed to hold accountable those responsible for violations against the Druze. He blamed "outlaw groups" seeking to inflame tensions for any crimes against civilians and did not say whether government forces were involved.

The U.S. and others quickly intervened to secure a ceasefire by Wednesday evening. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the flare-up as a "misunderstanding" between Israel and Syria.

A Syrian and a Western source familiar with the matter said Damascus believed that talks with Israel as recently as last week in Baku produced an understanding over the deployment of troops to southern Syria to bring Sweida under government control.

Netanyahu's office declined to comment in response Reuters' questions.

Israel said on Friday it had agreed to allow limited access by Syrian forces into Sweida for the next two days. Soon after, Syria said it would deploy a force dedicated to ending the communal clashes, which continued into Saturday morning.

Joshua Landis, head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, said it appeared Sharaa had overplayed his hand earlier in the week.

"It seems that his military staff misunderstood the backing of the U.S. It also misunderstood Israel's stand on the Jabal Druze (in Sweida) from its talks with Israel in Baku," he said.

'TOOK IT AS A YES'

A Syrian military official said correspondence with the U.S. had led Damascus to believe it could deploy forces without Israel confronting them.

The official said U.S. officials had not responded when informed about plans for the deployment, leading the Syrian leadership to believe it had been tacitly approved and "that Israel would not interfere."

A diplomat based in Damascus said Syrian authorities had been "overconfident" in its operation to seize Sweida, "based on U.S. messaging that turned out not to reflect reality."

U.S. envoy Barrack has said publicly and in private meetings in Damascus that Syria should be "one country," without autonomous rule for its Druze, Kurdish or Alawite communities, which remain largely distrustful of the new Islamist-led leadership.

That distrust has prompted Druze factions and a major Kurdish force in northeast Syria to resist Syrian army deployments, and demand their own fighters be integrated into the army as wholesale units only stationed in their territory.

Landis said it appeared Sharaa had understood Barrack's statements against federalism in Syria "to mean that the central government could impose its will on the Druze minority by force."

The senior Gulf official said Damascus had made a "big mistake" in its approach to Sweida, saying troops had committed violations including killing and humiliating Druze. The nature of violence handed Israel an opportunity to act forcefully, the Gulf official and another source said.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, an independent monitoring group, said on Friday the death toll from the violence had reached at least 321 people, among them medical personnel, women and children. It said they included field executions by all sides.

Reuters was able to verify the time and location of some videos showing dead bodies in Sweida, but could not independently verify who conducted the killings or when they occurred.

A regional intelligence source said Sharaa had not been in control of events on the ground because of the lack of a disciplined military and his reliance instead on a patchwork of militia groups, often with a background in Islamic militancy.

In sectarian violence in Syria's coastal region in March hundreds of people from the Alawite minority were killed by forces aligned to Sharaa.

With more blood spilt and distrust of Sharaa's government high among minorities, the senior Gulf Arab official said there are "real fears that Syria is heading towards being broken up into statelets."

The official from the Syrian ministry of foreign affairs said the Sweida operation was not aimed at revenge or escalation, but at preserving the peace and unity of the country.

Syrian troops were ready to re-engage to end the communal violence there "whenever appropriate conditions arise, including clear guarantees from the United States that Israel will not intervene," the official said, speaking before the Israeli announcement.

US DID NOT BACK ISRAELI STRIKES

Israel initially lobbied the United States to keep the country weak and decentralised after Assad's fall, Reuters reported in February.

In May, U.S. President Donald Trump met with Sharaa, said he would lift all U.S. sanctions, and nudged Israel to engage with Damascus even though much of Israel's political establishment remains skeptical of new Syrian leadership.

A State Department spokesperson said on Thursday that the U.S. "did not support" Israel's strikes on Sweida this week.

The attacks also came as a shock to some Americans in Syria. Hours before Israel struck the capital city on Wednesday, executives from three US-based energy companies arrived in Damascus for a day of meetings.

The lead member and organizer, Argent LNG CEO Jonathan Bass, told Reuters he had been sufficiently reassured by Washington that the violence unfolding in Sweida would not escalate to Damascus.

They were pitching an energy project to Syria's finance minister when Israel struck.

(Reporting by Timour Azhari and Suleiman al-Khalidi in Damascus and Maya Gebeily and Tom Perry in Beirut; Additional reporting by Crispian Balmer in Jerusalem and Humeyra Pamuk in Washington; Writing by Maya Gebeily; Editing by Daniel Flynn)