What factors lie behind this sudden resurgence—and why now?
Abdel Bari Atwan
The biggest surprise that the U.S. administration, its intelligence services in the Middle East, and “new Syria” in particular have woken up to is the major, deliberate return of the Islamic State (ISIS) to military activity: reviving its sleeper cells and adopting a new strategy to expand and resume its operations.
The success of a cell in targeting a military patrol belonging to the armed forces of the new Syrian army in the heart of Idlib—formerly the capital of Hayat Tahrir al‑Sham and the stronghold of interim Syrian president Ahmad al‑Sharaa—followed a week later by an ISIS member storming a U.S. meeting in Palmyra aimed at developing a joint strategy with the new Syrian security services to fight terrorism, killing three Americans (one of them a military interpreter), confirms that ISIS has emerged from hiding and has resumed its dual attacks: first on U.S. forces in Syria and the region, and second on the ruling authority in Damascus and its U.S.-backed security and military apparatus.
The Palmyra attack—carried out by a member of the Syrian security forces affiliated with al‑Sharaa’s authority, who stormed the above-mentioned meeting and killed the three Americans along with a Syrian security officer, wounding many others—ended with the wounded, especially the Americans, evacuated by helicopter to the U.S. al‑Tanf military base near the Iraqi‑Jordanian border. This attack carries several messages:
ISIS is still “alive and well,” and is capable of reaching any target it wants inside or outside Syria.
The international coalition formed in 2014 under U.S. leadership to combat ISIS failed in its mission—i.e., to eliminate it completely. Instead, ISIS gave up the vast territories it controlled in Iraq (Mosul) and Syria (Raqqa, its capital), and its cadres went underground.
After developing its strategy, tools, and methods of operation, and renewing its ranks, ISIS now has extensive experience infiltrating the security and military forces of the new Syrian regime (the ideology is the same). The perpetrator of the Palmyra operation—and the killing of the American soldiers—may be only the tip of the iceberg. He was not alone, and there may be many like him still within the ranks of new Syria’s security forces; the infiltration appears significant.
A return to “media savagery,” through high-impact military operations that put it back in major regional and global headlines, relying on a rule that served it well during its first rise: the more battlefield success it achieves, the more it repairs its image as an effective organization capable of striking militarily.
The more the organization succeeds on the ground and expands the scope of its operations—in number, capability, and quality—the easier it becomes for it to recruit new cadres of young men in the region and around the world.
ISIS’s return may deal a strong blow to the Lebanese authorities and to Israeli pressure to disarm Hezbollah, since ISIS’s biggest enemy is Hezbollah and its popular base.
Political and security chaos, Israeli incursions into Syria, Israel’s war of annihilation in the Gaza Strip, the paralysis of the official Arab order, rampant corruption, and economic collapse—all of these factors create a suitable environment for the renewed rise of hardline Islamist religious organizations, foremost among them the Islamic State, and perhaps soon al‑Qaeda, “the mother organization,” which was the first incubator of this ideology.
The choice of Palmyra for the first and largest attack marking ISIS’s return came for several reasons, most notably the organization’s extensive experience in urban warfare and the fact that it once controlled the ancient city itself and ruled it for more than a year in 2015 before being defeated and expelled—not by the Americans, but by the forces of the former Syrian regime’s army.
It seems that ISIS’s hardline ideology has become attractive to some Muslim youth because of the despair they live under, and because of direct U.S. support for Israel’s war of annihilation in Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, and Yemen—along with supplying the Israeli army with arms deals that include 2,000‑pound bunker‑buster bombs that succeeded in destroying 95% of towers and homes in the Gaza Strip—plus financial assistance exceeding $75 billion so far.
ISIS’s dormant cells have begun to awaken and resurface after nearly ten years. Just as it launched from Raqqa and the Syrian desert in the first phase, it is now following the same approach—and drawing on the same Syrian incubator—in the second phase, if it is not eliminated quickly, which is by no means easy. The chances of achieving that appear slim, if not nonexistent, because current conditions in the Arab region point toward an explosion of armed chaos, given the magnitude of the humiliation and degradation inflicted by America and Israel.
Israeli tank and bulldozer incursions into Syria’s Quneitra province on Thursday—storming homes, killing one civilian and arresting others—Israeli military maneuvers on the slopes of Mount Hermon, the new Syrian regime’s insistence on not responding, and the continuing massacres in Gaza: all of these factors, directly or indirectly, offer a golden gift to the Islamic State and its new leadership—and to other similar extremist organizations—making it easier for them to return to the forefront again. The days will tell.
* This article was first published on 18 December 2025 in Raialyoum and has been translated into English by TLF for its readers. The opinions expressed in this translated or hosted article do not necessarily reflect the views or editorial positions of TLF.