Syrian officials and Hezbollah representatives met secretly in Turkey at least once in September to defuse tensions between the longtime antagonists, Reuters reported on Thursday, weeks before Damascus said it broke up a Hezbollah-linked cell near the Golan Heights.
According to two Syrian officials and a U.S. official, Damascus assured the group it would not attempt to disarm it in Lebanon by force, and asked Hezbollah to help stop cross-border smuggling and dismantle any remaining sleeper cells, particularly in southern Syria. No agreement was reached, the sources said.
Both Turkey and Syria denied the meeting took place, Reuters said. Hezbollah, which the U.S. State Department has designated a foreign terrorist organization, did not respond to Reuters.
The report follows reports that Syrian security forces broke up a Hezbollah-linked cell preparing rocket attacks in the Yarmouk Basin, which borders the Golan Heights area where Israeli troops are stationed.
In a statement on X, Syria’s intelligence and security forces said three people with links to Hezbollah, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization, were arrested and the launch pads they allegedly planned to use dismantled.
The statement didn’t say what the intended target of the planned attack was.
Clash at the U.N.
All this takes place amid tense diplomacy. At the 81st United Nations General Assembly held last week in New York, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clashed over the presence of Israeli forces in what had been a buffer zone between the two countries under a 1974 agreement following the Yom Kippur War.
Shortly after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024, Netanyahu ordered troops into the buffer zone, which had been monitored by the U.N., in an operation his government said was designed to prevent attacks from Syria.
Al-Sharaa, who led the forces that toppled Bashar al-Assad’s government, sought to reassert his country’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights during his address to the U.N.
“Any attempts that violate our sovereignty, violate international law, will be stopped,” al-Sharaa said. “Golan will remain Syrian territories.”
He cited what he called a pattern of continued Israeli aggression. Since Assad’s fall, he said, Israel has carried out “500 air strikes, more than 1,200 incursions, and 300 detentions” in Syria.
At an event sponsored by the Atlantic Council the day before his U.N. address, al-Sharaa called on Israel to withdraw to the areas established by the 1974 agreement “and then we get into the discussions for security arrangements.”
He also rejected the idea that the Oct. 7 attack against Israel by Hamas, a Palestinian group the U.S. has also designated a terrorist group, should determine Israeli policy toward Syria.
“This is not logical, and this brings more security threats,” he said. “If you want to protect your own security, you need to respect the security of others.”
Netanyahu Responds
In his own speech at the U.N., Netanyahu said Jews have been on the Golan “since the days of Moses.”
Defense Minister Israel Katz said the Golan Heights, “under Israeli sovereignty, is an inseparable part of the State of Israel.”
“We will remain in the Hermon summit area and the security zone for as long as a jihadist threat persists against the border and Israeli communities, whether emanating from your own security forces or from other jihadist organizations and groups within Syria,” Katz said.
The back-and-forth at the U.N. is the latest in a string of recent incidents. In August, Israel bombed the Abu al-Duhur air base in northwest Syria, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) from the Turkish border.
At the time, Netanyahu said Israeli forces attacked to prevent Turkish forces from using the base. His office said Syria had been close to violating an agreement with Israel by allowing Turkish forces to deploy there.
The Aug. 18 strikes, which Syrian state media said hit the runway and storage facilities, reportedly followed a visit by a Turkish military delegation to discuss rehabilitating the site. Tom Barrack, the U.S. special envoy for Syria and ambassador to Turkey, called the strikes an “unnecessary escalation” and said Ankara had not been notified in advance.
Turkey is a strong backer of al-Sharaa’s government, which Israeli leaders fear is rearming and could present another threat on Israel’s border.
Al-Sharaa said the Syrian military was moving to take over bases operated by Russia under the Assad regime.
