Rex Tillerson 'would not take calls from Nato counterparts' when US launched 2017 Syria strikes

When the US launched air strikes on Syria last year it failed to notify foreign allies of the plan, according to a new book which details how Rex Tillerson refused to take phone calls from his Nato counterparts as they scrambled to find out what was going on.

The decision last April to fire 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base implicated in a chemical attack was one of Donald Trump’s most consequential decisions of his first months in office.

Yet, Ronan Farrow, author of War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence, details how the administration skipped the conventional step of warning Washington's Nato partners.

“When news broke, alarmed allies... were calling,” according to the official charged with placing Mr Tillerson’s calls.

Although the secretary of state was in Washington, staff were told he would not take calls.

“We were told that the Secretary had a long weekend so he was going to go home and have dinner with his wife and call it a night,” said the source.

The book offers an insight into Mr Tillerson’s troubled year as the top diplomat in Mr Trump’s unilateralist administration before being fired last month.

He had a reputation for being inaccessible to staff as he oversaw a reduction in the size of America’s diplomatic corps. But he was equally inaccessible to foreign counterparts.

“He is not a proactive seeker of conversations,” is how the officer in the State Department’s Operations Centre put it.

Excerpts from the book are published in the latest edition of the New Yorker magazine, including an interview in which Mr Tillerson suggested a key White House figure – assumed to be Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law – sowed instability by promoting rumours of his anticipated dismissal.

“I know who it is. I know who it is. And they know I know,” he said.