Eurasia Press & News
While the Islamic State (IS) remains territorially defeated in Iraq and Syria, emerging gaps in the region’s security landscape have incentivized the group to change its modus operandi.
When looking quantitatively at IS operations, attack numbers have hit a historic low thus far in 2026, with two spikes in IS activity in February and June against a range of diverse targets.
Lower levels of IS operations should not be interpreted as a sign that IS has been neutralized in Iraq and Syria, particularly in the wake of the mass escapes of IS families and detainees from Syrian detention facilities earlier this year, militia strikes near prisons holding IS fighters, and incidents of IS infiltration into Syrian security agencies.
The U.S. withdrawal from Syria and impending withdrawal from Iraq by the end of 2026 represent a new chapter for the counter-ISIS campaign in the Middle East, offloading the majority of counterterrorism operations to local actors in the wake of region-wide instability and escalation from the U.S.-Iran war.
Syria is experiencing a second wave of Islamic State (IS) activity this year, with a recent barrage of attacks against a diverse array of governmental, infrastructural, and political targets. In just last week alone, the terrorist group successfully launched at least four attacks against buses transporting Ministry of Defense personnel, oil tankers and commercial trucks, military regional headquarters, and even local political figures such as judges. There have been additional attacks this month against security checkpoints close to oil fields, along with messaging from IS leadership to expel U.S. influence in Syria — even as the U.S. has concluded its withdrawal from the country with parallel plans in neighboring Iraq by the end of 2026. With the U.S. military withdrawal comes additional departures from other capacity-building and advisory missions like NATO Mission-Iraq. If regional governments are now able to quickly sustain the tempo and scope of these former counterterrorism initiatives, IS may find new security vacuums to exploit.
Analysts still maintain that IS activity in Syria and Iraq is historically low — even when accounting for the recent boom in operations. The level of attacks in 2026 pale in comparison to the mid-2010s when the terrorist group consolidated major swaths of Syrian and Iraqi territory, attracted masses of foreign fighters to the Levant, possessed the capacity to launch sophisticated attacks around the international community, and operated its own alternative political economy. Even in the wake of the group’s territorial defeat after 2017, the number of IS attacks in 2026 ranks substantially lower than surges recorded in 2023 and 2024. However, the number of IS attacks and plots is only one side of the coin; analysis of the group’s tactics and targets shows a shifting modus operandi that corresponds with the changing conditions in Syria, amidst a backdrop of regional escalation. Analyst Aaron Zelin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy told The Soufan Center that the group’s activity should not be reduced to eradication or resurgence, with the reality being somewhere in between: “I think people need to pause before saying that the group is completely dead and that it’s going away. It’s also important to contextualize it historically, that they are the weakest that they’ve been since 2013, since they entered into Syria. At the same time, there are these factors that we don’t necessarily have answers for yet. As a consequence, I think we need to be a little humble in assessing the current threat level.”
The nature of IS activity has evolved as security and geopolitical conditions have seriously changed in the Levant and greater Middle East, bringing both opportunities and barriers for the group to the fore. The sudden collapse of the Assad regime in Syria and introduction of a new administration — largely constituted of fighters affiliated with the former Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — has made new openings in the local security landscape for IS to exploit. This has resulted in a change in IS’s targeting, shifting from ambushes against checkpoints and convoys associated with the U.S.-led counter-IS coalition — largely constrained to Syria’s northeast — to a more geographically expanded campaign against sectarian minorities, national and local political figures, and Syrian Ministry of Defense and Interior targets that represent flashpoints in Syria’s shaky security landscape.
Recent attacks conducted by IS in Syria have been perpetrated with twin objectives in mind. Firstly, IS seeks to degrade the new Syrian administration’s security forces in contested areas like the northeast, as they absorb former Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) units and seek to establish command and control. Secondly, the group seeks to undermine domestic and international confidence in the new administration, sowing seeds of insecurity, chaos, and terror that chip away at a social contract between the administration and citizens, spook international investment and confidence that Syria could serve as an overland alternative to the Strait of Hormuz, and erode central security that enables the group to physically reconstitute territorial control.
As the new government consolidates command and control over new units, contested territories, and skeptical constituencies, IS has found an opportunity to maximize different communities’ grievances — particularly hardline, former HTS fighters frustrated with the new government’s more moderate reforms that break away from their preferred Salafist agenda. While the new administration has avowed to counter IS and has partnered with neighboring countries like Türkiye to conduct arrests and thwart plots, along with formally joining the U.S.-led counter-ISIS coalition in November 2025, its capacity remains underdeveloped. The most recent Office of the Inspector General quarterly report on the Counter-IS Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) Mission in Iraq and Syria stated that the new administration’s counterterrorism capacity will take time, requiring years of bridge-building with local tribes and sources on the ground to improve human intelligence (HUMINT) collection capabilities, develop appropriate security protocols in remaining IS detention facilities, and retain focus on countering IS amidst several other domestic challenges and institution-building initiatives.
In neighboring Iraq, both the U.S. government and Iraqi security forces maintain that IS has little capacity to regroup — far lower capabilities than the group’s contingent in Syria’s Deir Ez-Zor, Hasakah, Damascus, and Aleppo. The recent Office of Inspector General Report on OIR stated that existing IS detainees held in Iraqi prisons — though overcrowded and in need of external support — reflect continued ideological alignment with IS, but are not organized enough to stage a jail break and reconstitute. Though there have been concerns about low-level IS breakout attempts that would enable recruitment and raise the threat level in both Iraq and Syria. During the U.S.-Iran escalation in March, Iran-aligned Hashd al-Shaabi militias in Iraq launched strikes near the Al-Karakh prison in Baghdad that held recently accepted thousands of IS prisoners transferred from Syria, highlighting the vulnerability of these detention systems. On June 21, Iraq’s Joint Operations Command announced a new barrage of strikes against IS hideouts in Anbar’s desert region, also illuminating the group’s continued — though fragmented — presence.
Considering IS’s evolved modus operandi, the U.S. has made gains in its plans for withdrawal from both Iraq and Syria, completing its departure from northeast Syria this spring and announcing plans for full withdrawal from Iraq by the end of this year. Still, even in light of the U.S.’s impending drawdown, IS has continued to call for the full eradication of U.S. presence in its public communications, likely referring to the new Syrian government’s cooperation, intelligence-sharing, and hosting of a joint operations center in Damascus with the U.S. As the U.S. shifts to a burden-sharing model with the Syrian government, IS will seek to exploit existing and emerging security gaps, while shifting its targets and tactics to fit new political and security realities.
