The United States is preparing to establish a military presence at an air base in Damascus to help implement a security agreement Washington is brokering between Syria and Israel, six sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The US plans for a presence in the Syrian capital, which had not been previously reported, would be a sign of Syria's strategic reorientation towards the US after the fall last year of longtime leader Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Iran.
The base is located at the entrance to parts of southern Syria that are expected to form a demilitarized zone under a non-aggression pact between Israel and Syria, brokered by the administration of US President Donald Trump.
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Reuters spoke to six sources familiar with preparations at the base, including two Western officials and a Syrian defense official, who confirmed that the US plans to use the base to monitor a potential agreement between Israel and Syria.
After the article was published, a source at the Syrian Foreign Ministry denied the Reuters report, saying it was "false", the state news agency SANA reported.
The source did not specify what exactly was incorrect in the report.
"The work is to transfer the partnerships and agreements previously reached with the provisional entities in Damascus, within the framework of joint political, military and economic coordination," SANA added, citing the same source.
The Pentagon and the Syrian Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the plan. Neither the president's office nor the Syrian Defense Ministry responded to questions sent through the information ministry.
A US administration official said the US is "constantly assessing its required position in Syria to effectively combat ISIS (Islamic State)" and that it "does not comment on locations or potential locations where US forces are operating."
The official requested that the name and location of the base be removed for security reasons, which Reuters accepted.
A Western military official said the Pentagon has accelerated plans in the past two months with several reconnaissance missions to the base. Those missions concluded that the base's long runway was ready for immediate use.
Two Syrian military sources said technical talks focused on using the base for logistics, surveillance, fuel supply and humanitarian operations, while Syria would retain full sovereignty over the facility.
A Syrian defense official said the U.S. had landed at the base with C-130 military transport planes to check the usability of the runway. A security guard at one of the base's entrances told Reuters that the U.S. planes were landing there as part of "tests."
It is not yet clear when US military personnel will be deployed to the base.
Joint Syrian-American presence
The new US plans appear to follow the model of two other new US military bases in the region that oversee cessation of hostilities agreements: one in Lebanon, closely monitoring last year's ceasefire between the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and Israel, and the other in Israel, overseeing Trump's ceasefire between the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel.
The US already has troops stationed in northeastern Syria, as part of a decade-long effort to help Kurdish-led forces fight Islamic State. In April, the Pentagon said it would halve the number of troops there to 1.000.
Sharrah said any US military presence must be agreed upon with the new Syrian state. Syria is set to join the US-led global coalition against ISIS soon, according to US and Syrian officials.
A person familiar with the base talks said the move was discussed during a visit to Damascus by Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM), on September 12.
A CENTCOM statement at the time said Cooper and U.S. envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack spoke with Sharaa and thanked him for his contributions to the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, which it said could help realize Trump's "vision of a prosperous Middle East and a stable Syria at peace with itself and its neighbors." The statement did not mention Israel.
The United States has been working for months to broker a security pact between Israel and Syria, longtime enemies. Washington had planned to announce the agreement at the United Nations General Assembly in September, but talks stalled at the last minute.
A Syrian source familiar with the negotiations told Reuters that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach an agreement by the end of the year, and possibly before the Syrian president's visit to Washington.
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