Islamic State in Middle East and Asia — Strategic Threat Outlook | December 2025
Operational Trends, Regional Destabilization, and Forecast
Executive Intelligence Summary
The Islamic State (IS) has demonstrated persistent operational resilience in the Middle East and Asia, despite continued military pressure, the degradation of its central leadership, and growing logistical difficulties. The organisation has not regained significant territorial capabilities, but has consolidated a model of widespread, adaptive, and decentralised insurgency, with varying intensity across Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
During the period analysed, IS maintained:
Operational continuity through low- and medium-intensity attacks;
Local regeneration capacity, mainly through sleeper cells and tribal networks;
Propaganda centrality, with a constant flow of claims, media products, and narratives of resilience.
From complex and coordinated operations to opportunistic attacks, targeted assassinations, IEDs, and actions against “soft” or symbolic targets.
The joint pressure of state actors, local militias, and international forces has contained IS’s territorial expansion, but has not broken its capacity for survival. The structural vulnerabilities of the states involved, including political instability, economic crises, fragmented governance, and latent conflicts, continue to offer IS operational space and recruitment pools.
In the short to medium term, IS does not pose an existential threat to the states analysed, but remains a chronic factor of regional destabilisation, with the potential for asymmetric escalation, especially in contexts with low state capacity.
Threat level: Medium
Trend: → (stable with expansion potential)
Primary risk areas: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan.
Time horizon: 3–6 months
Confidence level: Medium–High
Scope and Methodology
This Strategic Threat Outlook is based on:
systematic monitoring of Islamic State propaganda (videos, photos, statements, claims);
reporting from sources in the field;
Integration of OSINT, SOCMINT, IMINT, and Digital HUMINT.
Sources include primary Islamic State media channels, open-source reporting, official statements, and local sources across affected regions.
Limitations
Incomplete or delayed reporting from conflict zones;
exaggeration or omission in group claims;
Propaganda bias and potential disinformation.
Where verification is not possible, this is explicitly noted.
Provincial Snapshots
Islamic State Sham;
Islamic State of Iraq;
Islamic State Khorasan;
Islamic State Pakistan.
Overview 2025
Between January and December 2025, the Islamic State conclusively confirmed its transition into a post-territorial, long-term insurgent configuration, characterised by operational resilience, decentralisation, and strategic patience. Throughout the year, the organisation showed no credible indicators of structural collapse, nor any attempt to reconstitute proto-state governance. Instead, it consolidated an adaptive, low-cost operational model, fully internalising the lessons learned from the military defeat of the Caliphate.
By the end of 2025, IS had firmly abandoned ambitions of short-term territorial expansion in the Middle East and Asia. However, this strategic restraint did not translate into marginalisation. On the contrary, IS demonstrated an ability to remain a persistent and structurally embedded security threat, particularly in environments marked by fragmented governance, uneven counterterrorism pressure, and prolonged socio-economic stress.
Across Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, IS activity in 2025 consistently followed three interlinked and now structural trajectories: sustained insurgent persistence without territorial control; pronounced regional differentiation in operational capacity; and continuous tactical adaptation to military and intelligence countermeasures.
Insurgency persistence without territorial control
Throughout 2025, IS maintained the ability to exert armed pressure while operating entirely outside formal territorial control. This persistence was not driven by conventional military strength, but by a combination of resilient logistical networks, selective local entrenchment, exploitation of marginal or poorly governed spaces, and systematic reliance on low-exposure asymmetric tactics.