Harried by government security campaigns, IS appears unable to regain territorial control in Syria, instead working to maintain visibility through limited operations while betting on the failure of the country’s transition. The post ‘Waiting for chaos’: IS adapts under pressure, betting on the fail
Harried by government security campaigns, IS appears unable to regain territorial control in Syria, instead working to maintain visibility through limited operations while betting on the failure of the country’s transition.
1 July 2026
PARIS — The Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for a string of operations across Syria over the past month, from killing two defense ministry personnel in eastern Aleppo to attacking a security headquarters in Raqqa city, targeting a judicial official in Reef Dimashq and ambushing a military bus in Hasakah.
At the same time, Syria’s Ministry of Defense has repeatedly announced the dismantling of IS cells and the detention of its members in several provinces—most recently capturing an explosives manufacturer in eastern Syria.
Recent IS operations do not, in terms of military scale, appear to signal a return to the group holding territory in Syria, as it did prior to the collapse of its self-declared caliphate in 2019. They also do not seem to reflect a capacity to execute large-scale, complex attacks as in previous years.
Rather, these attacks reveal that the IS is working to maintain its presence—both as a security threat and in the media—through small, low-cost operations targeting members of the army and security forces, as well as figures associated with state institutions and areas with a relatively weak security presence.
From a security perspective, Syrian military researcher and defected officer Rashid Hourani said IS is working along two tracks: “carrying out limited operations in its former areas, particularly in eastern Syria,” while “attempting to activate its operatives in areas controlled by the government” to conduct attacks.
Such an approach aims to “fracture, weaken and confuse the government just as it is moving toward state-building,” Hourani told Syria Direct.
In the wake of the fall of the Assad regime on December 8, 2024, IS initially shifted from a strategy of deploying in “open spaces”—such as the Badia, Syria’s eastern desert—to attempting to infiltrate cities, but has run up against government security measures, researcher Muhammad Adeeb said.
“As the pace of government operations against IS intensifies, the frequency of its small operations increases, even as its capacity to conduct strategic, impactful operations declines,” Adeeb told Syria Direct.
What is the shape of the current IS presence in Syria? To what extent are the new government’s security campaigns impacting its structure and activity? Is IS heading towards disintegration, or adapting once more to a new reality?
Recently, the Syrian Ministry of Interior has stepped up its announcements of security operations targeting IS cells, as part of its efforts to pursue the organization and disrupt its ability to carry out new attacks.
According to statistics published on June 8, the ministry’s Counter-Terrorism Department, in coordination with the General Intelligence Service, arrested 235 IS personnel over the course of three months, including 198 Syrians and 37 foreigners.
Government operations have had a significant impact on the structure of the group for several reasons, according to military researcher Rashid Hourani. Most notably, he pointed to “the government’s seriousness in targeting the organization, ending the undeclared service relationship between it and other parties—such as the SDF and Iran—following their exit from the Syrian arena.”
Additionally, Syria joining the United States (US)-led anti-IS coalition earlier this year has made IS movements “difficult,” Hourani added, including in areas where it was previously active, to which government forces have redeployed.
Damascus is not only responding to operations carried out by IS, but “focusing on tracking and dismantling cells and networks,” researcher Adeeb said. “Government operations focus on the complete dismantling of IS networks, not capturing one or two members,” he added, characterizing it as a strategy to “strike its organizational and logistical structure.”
“IS has lost some of the room to maneuver it once had in the Syrian Badia and overlapping areas of influence since the fall of the Assad regime,” he added, because “government forces have a real presence, with local personnel from the area who know its geographic nature.”
For years before Assad fell, IS exploited vast desert areas to move between Syria and Iraq, taking advantage of security vacuums left by Iranian militias and regime and Russian forces in the Badia.
Adeeb and Hourani agreed that IS today has not lost its capacity to maneuver, but is attempting to “capitalize on the consequences of chaos,” as Hourani put it. At the same time, Adeeb noted a “decline in its ability to carry out strategic, large operations, while relying on smaller attacks targeting government forces in open areas and the margins, where security is weaker than in city centers.”
However, dismantling local IS cells does not necessarily strike at the group’s overall structure. After its territorial defeat in the Deir e-Zor town of Baghouz in 2019, “IS turned from a centralized organization to a decentralized one, operating within a system of military and security cells,” explained Hassan Abu Haniyeh, a Jordanian expert on Islamist groups. “There is centralization in making decisions and setting goals, but implementation is decentralized—left to individuals and cells.”
“IS has not lost its ability to adapt, and is trying to be economical in its operations while maintaining operational capacity and ideological rhetoric aimed at delegitimizing the new authority in Damascus,” Abu Haniyeh told Syria Direct.
IS is banking on what it terms “strategic patience,” waiting to see how the situation in Syria unfolds, he added. “Its strength is more objective than subjective—linked to the existence of security, political and economic dysfunctions that it can exploit.”
Despite its reduced capacity to carry out large-scale or complex operations, IS continues to make its presence felt through limited attacks, some aimed at targets with security and political importance. This approach is reflected in recent attacks in Raqqa, Reef Dimashq, Aleppo and Hasakah.
“At this stage, IS maintains limited operational capacity through limited operations focused on assassinating symbols of the new regime and directing strikes that put it back in the spotlight, rather than launching major or open-ended operations,” Abu Haniyeh said.
At the same time, “it is working to reestablish itself and entrench the concept of military cells operating in security vacuums and within cities while attempting to attract and recruit as many people as possible and build an extensive network,” he added.
IS is operating on two levels in Syria today, Adeeb said. Some attacks are “symbolic operations, targeting locations and individuals that can generate an impact larger than the incident itself,” while others “target government personnel in remote, open areas on the periphery.”
In choosing targets, “IS has sought to undermine the Syrian government in sectarian terms by targeting religiously sensitive figures or sites, aiming to expand each operation’s impact beyond the realm of security to political and psychological spheres,” Hourani added.
The future of IS in Syria may be related not only to its military capacity, but also the conditions that could allow it to regenerate itself. Despite losing territorial control, coming under renewed pressure and seeing a decline in its ability to carry out major attacks, IS maintains room to maneuver—particularly in areas marked by weak security or political and social tensions.
For years before the fall of the regime, IS maintained a “stable pattern of complex operations in Syria,” Abu Haniyeh said. Post-Assad, the group turned its focus to “reshaping its ideological, doctrinal and intellectual discourse, as well as its organizational structure,” he added.
“IS began developing propaganda on how to deal with the new regime, gradually progressing to calling it an apostate and infidel that does not apply Islam and the sharia, serves the US and is lenient with Israel,” Abu Haniyeh added. This framing sought to “strip legitimacy from the government of [President Ahmad] al-Sharaa, which derived legitimacy from toppling a murderous, criminal sectarian regime. Recognizing the popular support for al-Sharaa’s administration, it escalated its rhetoric, confrontations and operations gradually.”
The strength IS maintains stems not only from its cells, funding and ideological messaging, but from “the dysfunctions that surround it,” he added. “IS is betting on chaos and the failure of the new government, waiting to see how the situation in Syria unfolds, particularly in light of uncertainty regarding the form of the state, the complex relationships with local forces and the regional and international factors surrounding Syria.”
In this reading, “IS does not appear to be in a hurry to return to major operations and open-ended confrontation. It is monitoring the course of the transition and the crises it may produce” related to the economy, unemployment, relations with the US and Israel and domestic issues related to foreign fighters and the SDF, Abu Haniyeh said. “All these files, if not resolved or if managed in a way that increases tension, could become material IS uses for propaganda and recruitment.”
Israel has a particularly decisive role in shaping the future, he added. “It has a very hostile view of Syria, and wants to see it divided and fragmented, which helps IS. The future of the organization is tied to the future shape of the region—which we do not yet know—especially after the US-Israeli confrontation with Iran,” Abu Haniyeh concluded. “IS is waiting for chaos and failure.”
For his part, researcher Adeeb believes combatting IS cannot be done at the security level alone. “IS links its existence with an ideological, philosophical and intellectual dimension” and “aims to present itself as a refuge for those who are dissatisfied with or opposed to the government’s policies and directions,” he noted.
The challenge then, is not only to hunt down IS cells and networks, but to “learn what segments of society it is trying to attract and address the reasons for their discontent before IS succeeds,” Adeeb said.
“IS can still recruit, even if it is below the previous level due to its limited resources and mobility,” Adeeb warned. The risk moving forward “lies in its continued search for parts of society that are more receptive to its rhetoric—be they those dissatisfied with government policies, economically and socially marginalized groups or individuals driven by impulse who do not understand its nature and the danger it poses.”
“The biggest danger lies with IS capitalizing on Assad regime networks—regime remnants and drug trafficking networks under government pressure—and becoming a haven and escape for these networks, even if they do not share its ideology,” he added. “This is particularly significant since IS has, in recent years, invested in drug networks whose interests intersect with its own.”
“The scale of the challenge associated with IS is enormous, and stems from numerous factors that make it a cross-border dilemma,” Adeeb said, including “the vastness of the desert in Syria, Iraq and Jordan and the presence of IS pockets in Iraq that the government there struggles to combat and contain,” as well as “government policies that do not take the context of the group’s formation and activities into account.”
Increasing pressure on “specific segments of society, and their political and social exclusion, increases the organization’s ability to recruit from these populations,” he added. “The dilemma of dismantling IS requires serious effort to foster greater integration and role-sharing among regional powers, as well as more comprehensive security, social and development policies, to ensure a more sustained solution.”
Still, Hourani retains a level of optimism, concluding: “As the Syrian state continues to implement its economic and social programs, I believe that within a year IS activity—and its ability to recruit and carry out operations in various parts of the country—will likely end.”
This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.
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