ISIS will focus on regrouping in Iraq and Syria, as well as planning international attacks, US National Intelligence Director Dan Coats said in a statement for the record titled "Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community."
"Over the next year, we expect that ISIS is likely to focus on regrouping in Iraq and Syria, enhancing its global presence, championing its cause, planning international attacks, and encouraging its members and sympathizers to attack in their home countries. ISIS’s claim of having a functioning caliphate that governs populations is all but thwarted," the report says.
According to Coats, ISIS core has started - and probably will maintain - a robust insurgency in Iraq and Syria as part of a long-term strategy to ultimately enable the reemergence of its so-called caliphate. "This activity will challenge local CT efforts against the group and threaten US interests in the region," the report added.
He also said that the primary threat to US and Western interests from al-Qa‘ida’s global network through 2018 will be in or near affiliates’ operating areas. Not all affiliates will have the intent and capability to pursue or inspire attacks in the US homeland or elsewhere in the West.
