An unknown aspect of how Bashar al-Assad fled Syria to Russia when the rebels reached Damascus was presented by a columnist for the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, who claims that the Syrian politician gave Israel details of his country’s military targets so that Tel Aviv would allow the plane carrying him to travel to Moscow.

According to the report, Assad’s data included weapons depots, missile launch sites, military bases, and other key elements of Syria’s infrastructure.

In return, the Israeli armed forces reportedly agreed that the aircraft carrying Assad to the Russian air base in the town of Hmaimimim would not be targeted by the IDF.

As the Daily Mail recalls, hours after Assad landed in Moscow, Israel launched heavy bombing of critical Syrian military infrastructure.

Hurriyet journalist Abdulkadir Selvi also writes that Assad’s ticket out of Syria was “cut” at a meeting between Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakhan Fidan, and his counterparts from Russia and Iran, Sergey Lavrov and Abbas Arafat.

Speaking of this meeting on December 7 in Qatar, Fidan has said “we met with the Russians and Iranians in Doha and discussed certain issues. I don’t want to say more but at some point, they were on the phones, and in the afternoon of that day Assad fled.”

According to the same reporter, Assad initially wanted to go to Iran but Tehran denied him. The second choice for the Syrian president was the United Arab Emirates but Abu Dhabi did not want to bear that “burden” so Russia was the last and only option.

Recall that Assad escaped from the Russian airbase in Hmaimim using a trick as the pilots of the plane he was on initially headed for the Mediterranean but then did a U-turn and turned off the flight’s signal transponders.