'Islamic State' Remains Capable of Striking the New Syria: What Tactics Is It Using?

Islamic State remains capable of targeting Syria’s new government and threatening its stability by activating sleeper cells and carrying out deadly attacks against civilians and security forces, despite the change in regime.

Restoring security across the country has emerged as one of the most pressing challenges facing the new authorities, who took power after the ousting of Bashar al-Assad on December 8, 2024.

From the very first moment, Damascus moved to strengthen its regional and international alliances to confront Islamic State, which field reports suggest retains the capacity to mount attacks inside Syria.

New Attacks

International intelligence reports, particularly from the United States, confirm that Islamic State remains active in Syria through scattered groups and individuals across several provinces.

In the latest threat to Syria, internal security forces in the city of Mayadin, in the Deir ez-Zor countryside, foiled what they described as a “terrorist attack carried out by two remnants of Islamic State on a security checkpoint” on August 22, 2025.

Colonel Darrar al-Shamlan, head of internal security in Deir ez-Zor province, told the state news agency SANA that “one of the terrorists attempted to detonate himself with an explosive belt targeting the checkpoint.”

“The second, a gunman carrying a personal weapon, charged at the officers, who managed to neutralize the suicide bomber before he blew himself up, then engaged the second and brought him under control, ultimately neutralizing both assailants,” he said. One member of the internal security forces was killed in the incident.

In a previous attack, “a suicide bomber from Islamic State detonated an explosive belt” inside St Elias Church in Damascus on June 22, 2025, killing 25 people. The Syrian government blamed the group for the bombing.

In a sign of continued intelligence monitoring of its movements in Syria, the interior ministry announced on August 7, 2025, the dismantling of an Islamic State cell in the Harem area of Idlib province, saying its members had carried out assassinations in the countryside of Idlib.

The ministry said a special operations unit seized a cache of weapons that included explosive vests, improvised bombs, sniper rifles, light machine guns and mortar rounds, along with explosive materials and a workshop used for manufacturing and rigging devices.

Earlier, on August 21, 2025, U.S. and Syrian forces carried out a raid targeting a house in the Idlib countryside that resulted in the killing of a senior Islamic State leader.

At the time, a U.S. official, speaking anonymously to Reuters, said the strike killed an Islamic State member who had been seen as a potential candidate to lead the group in Syria, while another Syrian source said the figure was of Iraqi nationality.

The U.S. Department of Defense had said in July 2025 that it carried out a strike in Aleppo province which killed a senior Islamic State leader and his two adult sons.

Many observers believe that the growing threat posed by Islamic State in Syria could pave the way for renewed international intervention against the group.

Intelligence reports suggest the group is regrouping in the Syrian desert, a remote expanse of hills and mountains linked to the Iraqi border where Islamic State cells have been present since 2017.

Press reports circulated in early June 2025 indicated that the group had appointed “Abu Dujana al-Jubouri” as governor of Aleppo, a move seen as an attempt to reorganize in response to Syria’s shifting political landscape.

On April 21, 2025, Islamic State released a video in Arabic accusing Syria’s transitional president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and his government of “apostasy” and declaring them legitimate targets because of their participation in “democratic structures such as a constitution and elections” and their failure to “implement sharia,” according to the recording.

Observers said the propaganda video aimed to exploit former members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to destabilize Syria’s political transition.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, once led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, announced its dissolution at the beginning of 2025. 

Soon after, the United States removed the group from its list of foreign terrorist organizations under the Immigration and Nationality Act, effective from July 8 of that year.

Lone Wolves

The possibility that Islamic State could exploit the fall of the al-Assad regime to re-emerge in Syria remains very real.

More than 20 sources, including security and political officials from Syria, Iraq, the United States and Europe, as well as diplomats in the region, told Reuters on June 12, 2025, that this is precisely what the group is seeking to achieve.

According to the sources, the group has begun reactivating its fighters in Syria and Iraq, identifying potential targets, distributing weapons and intensifying recruitment and propaganda efforts.

In this context, retired brigadier general Abdullah al-Asaad, head of the Syrian Center for Strategic Studies “Rasd,” said that “Islamic State in Syria is capable of carrying out operations at any time, as it operates through sleeper cells and functions as small groups and lone wolves spread across different areas of the country.”

“The greater danger lies in the extremist ideology of Islamic State, which still survives among its remnants, fighters who were scattered by past battles fought against them on Syrian soil,” al-Asaad told Al-Estiklal.

“The group’s attacks on the new Syrian state reflect its ability to reignite this ideology and use it to recruit others in order to destabilize Syria and threaten the security of both civilians and the new security forces.”

According to al-Asaad, “Islamic State now feels that the new Syrian state has become a partner with the international community in the war on terrorism that targets it.”

“Islamic State cells in Syria remain dormant, but are activated to carry out new attacks through orders that move down from the leadership to operations officers, then to religious officials, and finally to the attackers themselves, whether they are local recruits or foreign fighters who have come to Syria from abroad,” he added.

Strategic Overhaul

Al-Asaad stressed that “Islamic State cells move to carry out the objectives assigned to them, guided by an intelligence network that gathers information and facilitates their movements to achieve those goals.”

“The new Syrian state must confront Islamic State through community awareness, by curbing manifestations that fuel its ideology, and by strengthening the expertise of Syrian security and intelligence forces,” he said.

The Institute for the Study of War, based in Washington, DC, has said that Islamic State may have retained cells in southern Syria, despite not carrying out attacks there for at least two years.

The United States and other Western governments have urged the new Syrian authorities to prevent the resurgence of Islamic State.

According to data from SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant activity online, the group claimed responsibility for 38 attacks in Syria during the first five months of 2025.

In May 2025, Syrian interior ministry spokesperson Nour al-Din al-Baba revealed that the group’s activity “increased after the fall of the former regime, as it managed to seize some of its leftover weapons.”

Al-Baba told Syria TV that Islamic State cells had attempted to infiltrate positions belonging to the Syrian defense ministry, adding that “the group also tried to recruit remnants of the ousted regime into its ranks.”

The ministry spokesperson confirmed that coordination is underway with Syria’s neighboring countries to combat the “cross-border” threat posed by Islamic State.

He noted that a recent meeting between Syrian and regional security agencies was held to discuss confronting the group.

In this context, Rita Katz, director of the SITE monitoring group, warned against interpreting a decline in attacks as a sign of weakness.

“Far more likely that it has entered a strategizing phase,” Katz told Reuters on June 12, 2025.

Three security sources and three political officials in Syria also told Reuters that, since al-Assad’s fall, the group has been reactivating sleeper cells, identifying potential targets and distributing weapons, silencers and explosives.