Nearly two decades ago, a secret Defense Intelligence Agency analysis warned that global terrorist attacks planned by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, would continue – even if he was captured or killed. “The network has demonstrated adaptability and resilience,” the DIA said in its forecasts for 2005. Zarqawi, it noted, has already carried out more high-profile attacks in Iraq alone – including personally beheading American hostages – than Osama bin Laden has orchestrated anywhere in the world. In 2006, a US airstrike killed Zarqawi in a hideout in an Iraqi palm forest, which President George W. Bush called “a serious blow to al-Qaeda.” He continued: “This is a victory in the global war on terrorism and an opportunity for the new Iraqi government to turn the tide in that fight.” The movement began to fade into oblivion.
However, remnants evolved into ISISthat attracted tens of thousands of fighters who took over a third of Iraq and Syria in 2014. They established a caliphate, ruling over eight million people, which lasted for almost five years. US soldiers who were deployed to Iraq and Syria in 2014 are still there to stop underground cells carrying out bombings, kidnappings and assassinations. In September, two American airstrikes killed thirty-seven people ISIS AND ISIS-related fighters in Syria.
The tendency of U.S.-focused terrorist movements to resurge after major military setbacks, even after the death of their leaders, is a persistent pattern observed by the last four American presidents. Their achievements in the Middle East serve as a chilling warning to the wider region, where in recent months Israel has assassinated eight top military and political leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah. Ryan Crocker, former US ambassador to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kuwait, warned: “Defeat can only be defined by the party that is apparently defeated, not the presumed winner. If someone feels defeated, they are defeated. If not, you keep fighting.” He added that nothing in the current conflict indicates that Hamas or Hezbollah – or their Iranian sponsors – feel defeated.
Israel is now preoccupied with its military advance. Until recently, the war in Gaza dragged on for months and the shadow war with Hezbollah lasted for decades. A huge new mural on a wall in Tel Aviv depicts Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, as a giant rat. “GAME OVER” – he boasts on the side. Israelis danced in the streets after an airstrike killed Hassan Nasrallah, the long-evasive political leader of Hezbollah. A lifeguard announced over a loudspeaker to beachgoers: “With joy, joy and joy, we officially announce that the rat Hassan Nasrallah has been murdered.”
This “triumphalism” is not a sustainable strategy for the 21st century, Paul Salem, who lives in Beirut as vice president of the Middle East Institute, told me. Eliminating enemy leadership is in some ways a Pyrrhic victory, he said, because military campaigns have only “raised walls of hatred” and fueled greater extremism “as an attitude” among both Israelis and Arabs throughout the region. Unless Israel offers a balanced plan that provides Palestinians with formal political space in exchange for security, the danger of escalation increases.
The pattern – and the folly of premature boasting of “successful” assassinations leading to the collapse of long-standing movements – is well documented. In 2011, bin Laden was killed in a daring Special Forces raid, ten years after the Saudi-born al-Qaeda leader orchestrated the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. President Barack Obama, in announcing bin Laden’s death, described the “great progress” that had been made in U.S. counterterrorism operations, including the overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan.
However, the Taliban has returned to power since 2021, after forcing the fall of the US-backed government in Kabul. This year, the United Nations reported that the Taliban was once again aiding and abetting al-Qaeda, which now runs eight training camps and five madrassas in Afghanistan.
The short-term confusion following the beheading of the movement’s leader is “almost obvious,” Hassan Hassan, co-author of “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror,” told me. He undermines the movement “tactically, strategically, ideologically and symbolically.” For these groups, charisma is often as important as sophisticated weapons.” But the “confusion, ideological schisms and weakening of operational capabilities” in the immediate aftermath could also lead to “long-term transformation.”
In 2019, President Donald Trump announced the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder and leader ISISwhen an Iraqi-born militant donned a suicide vest during a U.S. military raid on his remote hideout in Syria. Former Secretary of Defense Mike Esper said, “When you get rid of a leader like that, it has a huge impact on the organization.”
But five years later, the US intelligence community issued a stark warning in its latest threat assessment. Although al-Qaeda is at its “lowest operational level” in Afghanistan and Pakistan, i ISIS has “suffered cascading leadership losses” in Iraq and Syria, its regional affiliates “will continue to expand.” Neither is finished. Both have built deadly franchises in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.
Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian political scientist and pollster who teaches at Brandeis, told me that killing enemy leaders provides “temporary satisfaction” but is “unlikely to weaken groups” that have popular support. The current trajectory – deepening polarization, not reconciliation – “is likely to help strengthen the position of extremists in Israel and among Palestinians and other Arabs,” he said. After Israel released drone footage of Sinwar’s final moments – wounded and trapped in a worn, dusty chair – the Hamas leader was widely hailed in the Arab world as a “martyr.” A photo of him sitting on a chair went viral on the Internet. Militancy is especially likely to survive “when it is not accompanied by political changes that can provide a path to conflict resolution,” Shikaki told me. The Middle East now faces greater instability – and potential regional war – that in the worst-case scenario could attract the United States, Russia and China, which will have a huge impact on the global economy, he said.
Similar trends have been going on for years throughout the Middle East. In 2020, as a result of a United States air attack while traveling to Baghdad, General Qassem Suleimani, head of the elite Quds Unit of the Revolutionary Guard, was assassinated. Suleimani coordinated Iran’s Axis of Resistance, including large militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Gaza. The strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the leader of Kata’ib Hezbollah, Iraq’s deadliest militia, who greeted Soleimani at the Baghdad airport. After announcing that the strike had been carried out, Trump promised to continue “all necessary actions.”
However, a 2024 U.S. intelligence assessment shows that Tehran continues to arm and aid its network to threaten the United States and its allies, and will continue to do so well after the Gaza war. On October 19, two days after Sinwar’s death, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met in Istanbul with Hamas leaders, including candidates to replace Sinwar. And Kata’ib Hezbollah is now believed to be responsible for over a hundred attacks on American forces in Iraq and Syria.
Despite the losses they have suffered in recent months, both Hamas and Hezbollah are likely to “bounce back” in some form, given that the grievances of the communities they represent will only deepen in the face of physical devastation in Gaza and Lebanon, Joost Hiltermann, Middle East the program director of the International Crisis Group told me. At the same time, more significant blows to Hamas and Hezbollah, which have so long dominated political power and provided basic social services, could create a dangerous vacuum. In Gaza, “no one will be able to provide security and governance to a near-starving population of 2.2 million,” he said. Criminal gangs are already growing there and in the West Bank. And in Lebanon, “other militias may take advantage of the situation – perhaps with the support of external forces – to try to remove Hezbollah from the national scene,” Hiltermann said.
