On October 16, 2025, an ISIS explosive device struck a Syrian Energy Ministry bus traveling between Deir ez-Zor and al-Mayadin, killing four security personnel and injuring nine, according to state media. ISIS remains very much active in Syria, and its attacks are once again on the rise.
Following the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024, the U.S. Department of Defense reaffirmed that its mission to defeat ISIS in Syria remains ongoing. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh stated that U.S.
Central Command (CENTCOM), along with regional partners, will continue operations to prevent ISIS from reestablishing a foothold in the country. On December 7, 2024, U.S. forces conducted precision airstrikes in central Syria, hitting more than 75 ISIS targets, including camps and operatives. CENTCOM Commander Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla emphasized that the U.S. will hold any group accountable if it cooperates with or supports ISIS.
In May, ISIS carried out its first successful attack since the fall of the Assad regime, detonating a car bomb at a security post in Mayadin, killing five people. The attack followed clashes with ISIS cells in Aleppo and coincided with a U.S. troop drawdown in Syria that began in mid-April. So far, ISIS has claimed 33 attacks in 2025, and the pace of assaults has increased since U.S. forces were reduced from 2,000 to roughly 700.
Although Mayadin lies within government-controlled territory, most ISIS attacks have occurred in areas controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Both the SDF and regional analysts warn that a full U.S. withdrawal could significantly worsen the threat, particularly in Deir ez-Zor province, ISIS’s historical stronghold, by allowing the group to regain strength or attempt to free the 9,000 captured fighters and their families held in SDF detention camps.
Aram Hanna, a member of the SDF General Command and a veteran of the war against ISIS, explained, “They are ideology. They are a way of thinking.” He emphasized that this mindset has infected the current government. “Today, ISIS is not the one that carries a weapon and stands against us to kill us. ISIS could be a president now.”
Hanna was referring to two ideas: first, that the regime allows ISIS to attack the SDF in order to weaken it; and second, that Syria’s current leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa (also known as al-Julani), was once a commander of extremist cells. His HTS regime emerged from a coalition of anti-Assad forces, many of whom were extremists with ties to ISIS and al-Qaeda.
With a national leader sympathetic to radical ideologies, much of the population fears that Syria could become a de facto ISIS caliphate, or if not ISIS in name, then another repressive and violent regime built on the same ideology.
Lana Hussain, a female soldier from the YPJ with frontline experience, warned, “Imagine if all Syria became Idlib.” Idlib, in northwest Syria near the Turkish border, was the stronghold of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist faction that now forms the core of Syria’s new government under Ahmed al-Sharaa. It is now becoming a new center for ISIS activity.
Hussain recounted how fifty-six women attempted to escape from a camp for ISIS brides and children. “When they investigated thirty of them, they said they wanted to go to Idlib to stay there.” Idlib is increasingly viewed as a safe haven, and possibly a staging ground, for extremists. “The rest, the foreigners, want to go back to their countries to take revenge on their governments for not repatriating them.”
A large percentage of the ISIS brides held in Syrian camps are foreign women, including from Europe and Britain, whose governments refuse to take them back. As releasing them is too dangerous, they remain trapped indefinitely. Many of their children have grown up in the camps, and new children are being born into radicalization.
These camps have effectively become incubators for the next wave of ISIS attacks. “This is more dangerous than being in Idlib,” Hussain said, “because if these people go elsewhere, they will commit terrorist acts, certainly in Europe.”
Hussain pointed out that the current period is particularly dangerous because the SDF is stretched thin, and hunting ISIS cells is just one of several security priorities. While ISIS is making a comeback, SDF, the same army that defeated them the first time, are now tied up in ongoing conflicts with Damascus government forces, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), and occasional direct attacks by Turkey itself.
She explained that even before Assad was toppled, “in regime time, whenever we had any problem with the regime, we were busy with the regime, and they [ISIS and other extremists] used that time to rise again, to take this opportunity. After that too, it gave ISIS another chance to seize territory and become active again, especially the sleeper cells.”
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