Syria has declared it is ready to help confront the rising threat from the Islamic State group but warned the US against carrying out air strikes on its territory without the consent of Damascus, saying any such attack would be considered an aggression.

Walid al-Moallem, the Syrian foreign minister, said his government was ready “to co-operate and co-ordinate” with any side, including the US, or join any regional or international alliance against Isis. But he said any military action inside Syria should be co-ordinated with the Syrian government.

“Any strike which is not co-ordinated with the government will be considered as aggression,” he said.



Moallem appeared acutely aware of how much has changed since last August when the US was threatening to carry out punitive air strikes against Assad’s government in the wake of a chemical attack that Washington blamed on his forces. Since then global disapproval has shifted away from Assad and towards the Islamic extremists who are fighting him and spreading destruction across Syria and Iraq.



Moallem said Damascus had warned repeatedly of the threat of terrorism and the need to cut off resources and funding but “no one listened to us”. Syria’s government has long described the rebels fighting to topple Assad as “terrorists” in a foreign conspiracy.



US officials revealed last week that American special forces had tried to rescue the American journalist James Foley in a failed operation in Raqqa, Syria, in July. Isis militants beheaded Foley last week.

Referring to the mission, Moallem said: “Had there been prior co-ordination, that operation would not have failed.”

The minister denounced “in the strongest terms possible” Foley’s killing, while also asking: “Has the west ever condemned the massacres by the Islamic State … against our armed forces or citizens?”

In seeking to portray itself as a partner for the international community, Syria seemed intent on capitalising on the growing clamour among some US officials, including military leaders, to expand the current American air campaign against the Islamic extremists in Iraq and hit them in Syria as well.



President Barack Obama has been wary of getting dragged into the Syrian civil war, which the United Nations says has killed more than 190,000 people. He has resisted intervening militarily in the conflict, even after the deadly chemical weapons attack a year ago that Washington blamed on President Bashar Assad’s government.

But the extremist group’s rampage across wide swaths of Iraq, declaration of a state governed by their harsh interpretation of Islamic law in territory spanning the Iraq-Syria border, and beheading of Foley have injected a new dynamic into those calculations. Now Obama faces pressure from his own military leaders to go after the extremists inside Syria.

On Monday a senior administration official said Obama authorised surveillance flights over Syria, a move that could pave the way for US air strikes. The official was not authorised to discuss Obama’s decision publicly by name and insisted on anonymity.

In Moscow the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said western nations that long refused to condemn Assad’s enemies were now coming to realise the threat posed by Isis.



The west, he said, will “have to choose what is more important: to change the regime and satisfy personal antipathies with the risk that the situation will crumble, or find pragmatic ways to join efforts against the common threat, which is the same for all of us: terrorism”.

Moscow has been a close ally of Damascus for decades and has provided it with weapons and funding to help support Assad throughout the current conflict.

The Abbas regime’s warnings about Isis ring hollow to many in the opposition, who have watched Damascus turn a blind eye to the militants’ expansion in Syria for more than a year. Many accuse the government of facilitating the group’s rise at the expense of more mainstream rebel factions.

The breakaway al-Qaida group is the most powerful faction fighting Assad’s forces, which means a US campaign to weaken the Islamic State extremists could actually strengthen a leader the White House has sought to push from office. Obama could try to counteract that awkward dynamic by also targeting Assad’s forces, though that could drag the US deeply into the conflict.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday that Obama had not made a decision on whether to take military action inside Syria but noted that the president had demonstrated his willingness to take military action to protect American citizens. “That is true without regard to international borders,” he said.

Earnest tried to tamp down the notion that strikes against the Islamic State could have the unintended consequence of bolstering the Syrian government, saying: “We’re not interested in trying to help the Assad regime.” However he noted that there are “a lot of cross-pressures here in this situation”.

Moallem’s news conference came a day after jihadis captured a major military air base in north-eastern Syria, eliminating the last government-held outpost in a province otherwise dominated by the Islamic State group. After several failed attempts, Islamic State fighters stormed the Tabqa air base Sunday, killing dozens of troops inside.



Moallem conceded defeat in Tabqa, saying that soldiers were withdrawn to nearby areas along with their weaponry and warplanes. Videos posted on militant websites on Monday showed celebrations in the nearby town of Tabqa, controlled by Isis, including fighters honking noisily as they drove in cars carrying the group’s black and white flags.