U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry attends a joint news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov following their meeting in Moscow, Russia, July 16, 2016. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

Russian warplanes bombed a garrison used by US and British forces in Syria twice last month, despite being warned by a US surveillance aircraft flying nearby that the base was not occupied or being used by members of ISIS.

The airstrikes — which hit the base in southeastern Syria just 24 hours after 20 British special forces had left and killed four US-backed rebels — appear to have been Moscow's way of pressuring the US into sharing military intelligence and coordinating more closely with the Russians in Syria, The Wall Street Journal's Adam Entous reported.

Moscow initially told the Pentagon that it thought that the base was being used by ISIS, according to the report. It later claimed that US Central Command's refusal to provide Russia with the garrison's coordinates was largely to blame for the incident.

Nearly a month after the first incident, Entous reported, Russia dropped cluster bombs on another US-linked base on the Jordanian border housing CIA-backed rebels and their families.

Washington's reluctance to coordinate with Moscow in Syria has largely stemmed from the Russians' pattern of targeting US-backed rebel groups there under the guise of defeating "terrorists" who oppose Syria's president and Russia's close ally, Bashar Assad.

View photos putin More

Russia's intervention in the war on behalf of Assad last September has created a catch-22 for the Obama administration, which remains divided over whether sharing military intelligence with the Russians in Syria would make them more or less likely to target the country's non-jihadist opposition.

This incident "brings out something that was already evident to almost everyone who has spoken to US foreign policy officials recently," Mark Kramer, Program Director for the Project on Cold War Studies at Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, told Business Insider on Saturday.

"Namely, that the Obama administration is deeply divided over how to respond to Russia's inflammatory actions in Syria and elsewhere."

He continued:

"Many on the NSC [National Security Council] staff, as well as in the Defense Department and CIA, worry that Obama's timidity and inaction are simply encouraging the Russians to step up their dangerous and provocative actions...The State Department is highlighted in the WSJ article as the defender of a timid approach in the face of Kremlin aggression, and there is certainly a good deal of truth in that. But the real problem is Obama himself, who seems to have no desire to take a firm stand against Russian actions."

'The president has authorized and ordered this track'

US President Barack Obama decided earlier this month that working more closely with the Russians to target Al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, aka Jabhat al-Nusra, would serve US national security interests long-term. Obama and Putin reportedly spoke by phone in early July and confirmed the plan that will involve enhanced sharing of information about the group's positions.

US Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Moscow shortly thereafter and met with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. He has declined to comment on the "internal negotiations" ongoing between the US and Russia.

"The president of the United States has authorized and ordered this track," Kerry told reporters on Friday. "It is the president’s desire to test whether or not the Russians are prepared to do what they said during our negotiations in Moscow that they will do."