Syria has offered its help to battle the threat from the Islamic State but warned the U.S. against launching air strikes without its approval, the Associated Press reported.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said they are ready "to cooperate and coordinate" with any international effort to defeat IS, which has committed gruesome murders and other atrocities throughout Syria and northern Iraq in an attempt to establish a strict form of Islamic rule.
But any air strike or other military action carried out in civil-war torn Syria must be discussed first.
"Any strike which is not coordinated with the government will be considered an aggression," Moallem said according to the AP.
Syria's announcement comes after American journalist James Foley was beheaded by an IS militant in a gruesome video that surfaced online last Tuesday. The Sunni jihadist group formerly warned the U.S. it would kill Foley, who was kidnapped in Syria in 2012, in retaliation for the air strikes launched on IS targets in Iraq earlier this month.
Moallem said Syria has long warned the world about the increasing terroristic threat and insisted immediate action but "no one listened to us," the AP reported. He also mentioned the U.S.'s failed attempts to rescue Foley from where he was being held in the rebel-controlled city of Raqqa, Syria.
"Had there been prior coordination, that operation would not have failed," the foreign minister said.
U.S. air strikes in Syria may not be completely out of the question, now that President Barack Obama approved air surveillance over Syria to keep an eye on the militants, which defense officials announced Monday.
But Obama faces a tough dilemma because any air strikes on IS targets may backfire and bolster Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, which the West accused of committing human rights violations against civilians in the three-year civil war.
