A pair of deadly attacks this month, in Syria and Australia, have shed new light on the Islamic State, the militant group whose sudden rise to power in the Middle East and reign of terror around the world seemed to peak, then fall, during the 2000s.
But to experts who study ISIS, the law enforcement and intelligence officials fighting it, and the growing number of victims who have been attacked or intimidated, the group has long been more down than out — a diminishing threat, but a threat nonetheless.
“They never disappeared,” said Aaron Zelin, an expert on the group and a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The nature of the threat has just changed and the nature of the way they have organized themselves has changed. But what drives ISIS has never changed.”
Last weekend, a member of the Syrian security forces shot and killed three Americans – two soldiers and a translator – near the city of Palmyra. ISIS did not claim responsibility for the attack, but the US and Syrian governments blamed the terrorist group.
The US military launched air strikes against ISIS infrastructure and weapons sites in Syria in response to the attack, officials said on Friday.
US President Donald Trump said, on Friday, in press statements: “We are striking very hard at the strongholds of ISIS in Syria, a place stained with blood and suffering from many problems, but it has a bright future if ISIS can be eliminated.” Posted on Social Truth.
In Sydney, two men opened fire on a Chanukah gathering at Bondi Beach on Sunday, killing at least 15 people. The police shot the two men. One man died. The other, the man’s son, survived and was charged in the attack. ISIS social media accounts traditionally associated with the attack praised the attack but did not officially claim responsibility, referring to it in an official post as “Sydney Pride.” The two suspects were found in possession of ISIS flags and publications.
While the two incidents were notable for their geographical spread, the identities of those killed and the perception that ISIS had faded from global headlines, experts say they were exceptions that belie a measurable metric: ISIS is getting weaker, and arrests and attacks are declining globally.
“There will always be some room for attacks here and there,” said Renad Mansour, a research fellow at Chatham House, a foreign policy think tank based in London. “But the trajectory is that ISIS is still in decline.” “Anyone who has a complaint and finds a network can basically attack, and in many cases central ISIS leaders don’t even know it’s happening until it happens, and then they demand it.”
He added that the group has claimed responsibility for 1,100 attacks so far in 2025, down from 3,460 attacks in 2019.
Zelin said, citing Amnesty International, that 383 people have been arrested linked to ISIS around the world so far in 2025. The Washington Institute’s Islamic State mapped global activitiesIt is an initiative he leads. Zelin said reports from police sources found 531 arrests last year, the vast majority of which occurred in active war zones such as Iraq and Syria.
One thing the recent attacks demonstrate is the strategy that has made ISIS effective in the past: its big tent approach to operations and ideology that allows “lone wolf” actors to associate themselves with ISIS with almost no scrutiny or coordination.
“It’s something we’re seeing more and more hallmarks of ISIS-related activity dating back 10 years,” Rebecca Weiner, the New York Police Department’s deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, told NBC News. “It was a professional do-it-yourself model that had already been spread around the world by ISIS, inspiring dozens of people to carry out attacks in their name.”
The Islamic State emerged from the boiling waters of Syria’s civil war in early 2010, when Syria’s porous borders and abundance of Islamist fighters provided fertile recruiting grounds for all manner of jihadist groups. But ISIS distinguished itself by forming an autonomous state encompassing parts of Syria and Iraq, which promised a return to the political expansionism that characterized early Islam.
Despite its defeat, the “caliphate” remained a central part of the Islamic State’s message, even as the group shifted its focus more toward terrorism than state building.
It is known that the two suspects in the Bondi Beach shooting visited the Philippines before the attack. If investigators find that the two men underwent ISIS commando training in southern Mindanao, it could indicate a level of central coordination that ISIS investigators have not seen in years.
The group’s activities over the past year have also shown lasting, if weak, public appeal.
Polish authorities said on Tuesday they had arrested a teenager they said had sought to contact the group and were suspected of planning an attack on a Christmas market.
In Michigan, in October, two men were charged with planning a mass shooting over the Halloween holiday.
Almost a year ago, an American Muslim influenced by ISIS killed 14 people when he drove a truck into New Year’s revelers in New Orleans.
ISIS remains unable to reconstitute its so-called caliphate, a vast Islamic emirate that the group ruled across parts of Iraq and Syria until it was finally destroyed in 2019. In both countries, ISIS attacks reached historic lows last year.
The group made great strides and was able to form some territories in the Sahel region in northwest sub-Saharan Africa – countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
The Islamic State’s presence in Africa’s remote, arid and sparsely populated regions may still appear to be merely surviving rather than thriving to its members and potential recruits.
“Although they are active in many African countries, they do not have the same kind of ideological veneration because there is a lot of history in the Arab world related to Islam,” Zelin said.
While the terrorist attack in Sydney was fatally successful, many more ISIS attacks have been thwarted by law enforcement as multinational engagement in the fight against terrorism grows stronger.
While observers said it is too early to say that the recent attacks amount to a resurgence of the group, there are two relatively recent changes that could help revive the group’s fortunes. The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria a year ago revived chaos in the country, providing a broader opportunity for the Islamic State.
When Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa — himself a former Islamist militant who once led an offshoot of Al Qaeda — joined the U.S.-led global coalition to defeat ISIS last month, it put a target on the back of the Syrian government.
Even before that, the attack claimed by ISIS on a church in Damascus that killed at least 25 people in June once again raised the Syrian authorities’ interest in the threat posed by ISIS.
Meanwhile, the group’s messaging has exploited Israel’s highly lethal war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip as a rallying cry for attacks against the West. Palestinian health officials say more than 70,000 people have been killed in the war.
Colin B said: “I think the conflict in Gaza has risen over the past two years,” said Clark, executive director of the Soufan Center, a New York-based security think tank. “It has brought in a larger group of people who are now consuming information that leads them very quickly through social media algorithms to extremist content.”
As much of the world gathers to celebrate religious holidays at the end of the year, Islamic State commandos — whether self-appointed or directed by its leadership — are also taking notice.
The group has targeted religious celebrations in the past, and analysts have warned that another stunning attack against Christian, Jewish or Muslim targets could give the Islamic State the propaganda boost it needs for a more lethal and influential 2026.
“These are big times when they might try to do things,” Clark said. “If they can do things again quickly, that will be huge for them, because they haven’t been able to do things like this in years.”