Israels's Next War - August 20, 2026

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
So upset, my God.

**Cenk Uygur** (0:13)
All right, welcome to The Young Turks, Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian with you guys, chock full of news today, of course. So we got Joe Kent versus Dan Bongino in a war over the Tyler Robinson case. I think that case is going to, it has the ramifications of potentially changing the country and the planet. Yeah, I'm saying it, and that's a very big thing to say, but we'll see as time goes on why I say that. I think that there's, of course, many other things that are going on, all crazy, all chaotic. Israel and Turkey might soon get into a war, I thought that was crazy, but apparently it's very real. We're gonna talk about that in a minute. And then Donald Trump and Scott Besson saying, the economy is great as it begins to crater right around them, that is amazing. And then finally, Natalie Harp seemed like a silly little story, right?
But as it turns out, no, foreign governments are apparently using her, even though she does not have national security clearance, super dangerous, we'll talk about that later. And then finally, we gotta get to this story later in the program.
So, the whole thing about, my god, there's so much anti-Semitism on campus, utter nonsense. So someone inside the Trump administration explains how they made it up, and that is an amazing story. So, Ana, good to see you.

**Ana Kasparian** (1:36)
And- Good to see you.

**Cenk Uygur** (1:36)
Yep, lots to get to. So, let's start on the first story here.

**Ana Kasparian** (1:40)
Absolutely, well-

**Cenk Uygur** (1:41)
Yeah, okay, sorry, I'll kick it over to you.
So Israel just struck a northern Syrian airbase, and the Turkish delegation that was there had just left hours ago. If they had hit the delegation, Israel would have triggered a war with NATO, which is insane. And so I thought the Israeli aggression along these lines was just bluffing and posturing for their elections. It turns out that is not the case. Both sides are preparing for a war. We're going to explain that to you throughout the story. I'm going to come back and make some points about how Israel's preparing and Turkey's preparing.
And I've also figured out why Israel wants this war. It turns out there's an economic reason. So this is a startling development, a country that has started so many wars in the Middle East. Israel attacking nearly all of its neighbors. Now attacks Syria again, and would like to start a war against NATO which would include America. Ana, please explain to us the details of this story, which are unbelievable.

**Ana Kasparian** (2:50)
Gladly, but I will say it is not unbelievable. I think we need to get to a place where people are no longer experiencing even a drop of naivete when it comes to the genuine intentions and motivations of Israel. But with that in mind, let me tell you what we know so far. So Israel dropped at least eight bombs, eight bombs on runways and hangars at the Abu al-Dhur air base in northern Syria specifically. So that's about 45 miles away from the Turkish border. Now luckily, these Israeli strikes that hit this air base didn't end up killing anyone, but they did do a lot of damage to the runways, which had just been rebuilt following a pretty devastating Syrian civil war. Now at first, Israel completely denied that they had carried out this attack. An Israeli military center in fact, put a gag order on any reporting in Israel that would confirm that the Israeli defense forces had conducted these strikes. And then US Ambassador to Turkey and Syria, Tom Barrack, then goes on X and confirms what we all suspected. That Israel was in fact, behind these strikes, these eight bombs, at this airbase in which a Turkish delegation was just at and had just left hours earlier. So let's get to some of the reporting on this. As Tom Barrack wrote on X, he says that we are deeply concerned that the confirmed Israeli airstrikes on the airbase constitute an unnecessary escalation that does not advance regional stability. Now let me just pause for a second and remind everyone that this is the guy who spoke down to Lebanon, to the Lebanese people on behalf of Israel. He's a major Zionist, hardcore Zionist, always sides with Israel. But in this case, he's speaking out and he's the one who really confirmed that these strikes happened in the first place. He says, the Al-Sharah government, Al-Sharah is the relatively new leader and former al-Qaeda terrorist of Syria, has neither adopted a predatory posture nor maintained proxy forces. It has in fact repeatedly indicated its preference for de-escalation with Israel. The United States has in the past and will continue in the future to host discussions to encourage diplomatic cadence over genetic frustration for both nations. Okay, so there he is confirming it. Now the real question is why? Why is Israel doing this? Now Israel later did confess that Turkey was their target. I'm not kidding.