What would Syria joining the US-led coalition mean for the fight against IS?

PARIS — Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and United States (US) President Donald Trump are set to meet at the White House on Monday, in a historic visit expected to focus in part on Syria joining the US-led international coalition against the Islamic State (IS). 

On November 1, US Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack announced al-Sharaa would meet his US counterpart on November 10, noting he was expected to sign an agreement for Syria to join the coalition during the visit. 

Damascus, for its part, has not publicly announced it intends to join the 89-member coalition. However, signs of increasing security and intelligence cooperation have emerged in recent months. 

Since July, Syrian and US forces have conducted at least five joint operations targeting IS cells. The most recent was on October 18, when US coalition forces carried out an airdrop operation in the al-Dumayr area of Reef Dimashq, in coordination with the Syrian Ministry of Interior, resulting in the arrest of a senior IS leader. 

Even as the Syrian government continues security operations to hunt down IS cells in Syria’s eastern desert—the group’s main stronghold before the fall of the Assad regime last year—and in a number of cities, IS is working to restructure its activities and presence in line with the new situation in the country.

IS has repeatedly warned the new government and al-Sharaa against joining the international coalition. However, IS attacks against the transitional government have been limited so far. 

Since the territorial defeat of IS in 2019 at the hands of the coalition and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), SDF areas have been the main arena for IS operations. Those areas have seen a “significant increase” in activity since the fall of the regime, according to official SDF figures, with 153 attacks between December 8, 2024 and September 20, 2025.

What would Syria joining the coalition mean? 

A partnership between Damascus and the US-led coalition would be “a point of strength for the government and its agencies,” military researcher and defected officer Rashid Hourani said. Recent coalition operations “against top-tier leaders in northwestern Syria represent a penetration of IS, at a time when it was thought capable of hiding in government-controlled areas.” 

This partnership would “grant the government the ability to monitor and track IS cells in its areas and build a database on the organization, its figures and movements, helping thwart future operations,” Hourani told Syria Direct. 

With jihadist roots of its own, Syria’s new administration has practical experience to draw on in dealing with jihadist movements and extremist factions. It also possesses a high degree of pragmatism that has enabled it to gradually, and remarkably, reshape its discourse and ideology in recent years: evolving from the Jabhat al-Nusra of 2012 to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) that formally dissolved itself after the regime fell and now forms the backbone of the new government. 

Over the past five years, HTS dismantled or co-opted a number of extremist groups and factions in the areas it controlled in northwestern Syria. The same period saw what appeared to be a mysterious relationship between the international coalition, US forces and HTS. US forces carried out repeated operations in northwestern Syria targeting foreign fighters who were either opposed to HTS or outside its umbrella.

“If Syria is allowed to join the international coalition, or space is opened for a new level of cooperation, it would have a symbolic impact,” said Sam Heller, a Beirut-based American researcher and fellow at The Century Foundation. “It would also score points in Washington at a time when the US Congress is discussing lifting sanctions on Syria.”

“Should the US presence and operations in Syria continue, joining the coalition would allow its leadership to equate that presence with Syrian sovereignty, even if only in a symbolic and political sense,” he told Syria Direct. 

Closer coordination between Damascus and Washington could also “make a tangible difference in the war against IS,” Heller said. For instance, the US could “provide field field training to Syrian military units, alongside advanced monitoring and surveillance technologies that could strengthen efforts to counter the organization.” 

“The boundaries of this cooperation remain unclear,” he noted. “It is not yet known whether officially joining the coalition is a prerequisite, or if there could be cooperation without it.”

Hassan Abu Haniyeh, an expert on Islamist groups, said fighting IS today “requires large-scale intelligence work that has not yet taken shape in the new Syria.” HTS possessed active intelligence capabilities in Idlib, “but at the national level, the Syrian security structure is still being formed. Even the US itself lacks a clear bank of IS targets in Syria, and needs a long time to build it.” 

In the same context, Hourani said “HTS’s arrival to power, and the positive engagement with it by the US administration in particular, alongside support from regional actors, indicates that the new administration—despite its jihadist background—is seen as a local, national actor through which Syria can be integrated into the regional security framework.”

“I do not rule out the possibility of a Syrian partnership with NATO in accordance with the partnership frameworks already in place with Middle Eastern and North African countries,” Hourani added. He pointed to NATO’S 2004 Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) and 1994 Mediterranean Dialogue (MD). The security alliance also previously “sent a mission to train Iraqi security forces to counter IS,” he said.

What about IS strategy?

With the fall of the Assad regime last December, IS began to change its deployment strategy, creeping more into cities at the expense of its traditional presence in the Syrian desert. 

Recent years saw “a declining state of [IS] military activity,” but the group increased its activities after the regime fell, Hourani noted. He believes this was “for reasons related to its undeclared cooperation—at the level of mutual interest—with both the SDF and Iranian militias that aim to undermine the state’s efforts to impose security and stability.” 

“IS fears the Syrian government will seek to join the international counterterrorism coalition, so it wanted, through its operations, to take the initiative,” he added. 

IS has attempted to “rebuild its strength, taking advantage of the security vacuum left by the rapid fall of the regime,” Hourani added. In this, it relies “on foreign fighters within HTS, and their stance on the deep shifts in its policy and its full adoption of nation-state building.” 

Military and strategic analyst Mustafa al-Farhat said IS “exploited the vacuum, or the new leadership and authority not yet consolidating power,” to “recruit those it could entice or draw into its ranks, relying on ideological persuasion and exploiting cases of marginalization, poverty and hardship, with a focus on certain foreign fighters who still believe in transnational jihad.” 

However, operations carried out by Syrian and US forces in recent months have “significantly reduced IS activity, despite the ongoing instability in the country,” al-Farhat told Syria Direct. 

Since its 2019 defeat, IS has abandoned the “idea of spatial control,” Abu Haniyeh explained, adopting a strategy of attrition and guerilla warfare and transforming itself into “small, decentralized cells” or “lone wolves.” 

“IS has continued the same policy, with no new shift in its organizational structure, ideology or military strategy,” he added. 

Today, IS focuses on targeting the SDF while restructuring itself and setting its priorities, Abu Haniyeh added. It “is not focusing on targeting the new Syrian administration directly.” 

“IS is economical in its operations, and is in a state of ease in the absence of significant pressure from the coalition or new Syrian administration,” he added. Damascus has other priorities, related to “regime remnants, the Druze, Israel and the Kurds, while the military and security structures of the new Syria are incomplete, both constitutionally and legally,” he added. 

At the same time, “the organization’s recruiting capacity has declined due to the Syrian people’s awareness and the solidarity of most with the new state,” alongside “the international community’s desire for a stable Syria,” al-Farhat said. 

However, he noted that the absence of a strong central state—due to persistent factionalism and weapons outside its control in northeastern and southern Syria, alongside non-state actors—could play in its favor, alongside the possibility of meddling by foreign actors such as Iran. 

Betting on failure

In official IS media, such as the al-Nabaa newsletter, the group is betting on the “failure of Syria and the new regime,” Abu Haniyeh said. “It has not changed its view of HTS and al-Sharaa. It sees them as infidels, and stresses the point that they are violating sharia and religion, and have become part of the international coalition.” 

Despite this ideological conviction, IS is “sparing” in its operations against the Syrian government, preferring to “wait for it to fail,” he added. “It is the ally of failure, which it turns into strength, and it is watching public opinion and anger.” Damascus faces complex challenges, both regionally with Israel and Iran and domestically with slow reconstruction, soaring poverty levels and a lack of financial support. 

While monitoring Damascus’s situation, IS is focusing its capabilities on “recruitment, establishing a wide network of sleeper cells in all Syrian cities and towns, and exploiting those who are angry with the new administration,” Abu Haniyeh said. It aims to “exploit contradictions and divisions,” like those that emerged in recent clashes with French foreign fighters in Idlib, and “works to portray the new regime as an agent of the Americans.” 

In order to avoid IS exploiting jihadist fighters, al-Farhat called on the Syrian government to “integrate those who wish to remain into the state military structure while carefully monitoring their behavior, especially the foreigners.” This, in his view, “would help stabilize the pillars of the state and reduce the threat of IS.”

After “the euphoria of victory and being rid of a murderous regime, Iran and Hezbollah, bit by bit the real difficulties of building the state set in, and IS is betting on Syria becoming a failed state,” Abu Haniyeh said. 

“Any IS operation against the new regime could backfire, create hatred of it and increase people’s solidarity with the new regime,” he added. “It is aware of these risks, and seeks to remain in a state of dormancy and security, rather than engaging militarily.” 

“The behavior of the new regime once the features of the new Syria take shape will determine how IS deals with it,”Abu Haniyeh said. 

“The future of IS fades away the more the state, its influence and stability increases,” al-Farhat concluded. “It is an inverse relationship: the more of Syria the state controls, the fewer opportunities IS has. This is what we have seen in several African countries, where IS took advantage of an absent central state and civil war to make a comeback.” 

This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.