ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Iran War

On May 11, the Program on Extremism at The George Washington University hosted an in-depth discussion on how the Iran War is shaping the behavior and positioning of global jihadist actors. As the conflict unfolds, it provides a rare analytical window into how the Islamic State and al-Qaeda respond to a central adversary under conditions of heightened pressure.

Drawing on two recent publications from the TITAN Project, the discussion examined how both organizations have approached Iran, both historically and in recent months. Particular attention was paid to the contrast between ISIS’s explicit and doctrinally rigid positioning and al-Qaeda’s more selective and strategically constrained approach, as well as what this reveals about competition within the jihadist field.

The panel also explored the broader implications of this moment, including the role of sectarianism as a catalyst in the region, the renewed relevance of long-standing issues such as al-Qaeda’s leadership presence in Iran, and how these dynamics shape current perceptions and strategic choices. More broadly, the conversation assessed whether the crisis reinforces existing patterns or accelerates changes in how jihadist actors engage with state power, regional conflicts, and competing priorities.

To delve into these matters, the Program on Extremism was honored to host:

• Mr. Colin Smith, Coordinator of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team (United Nations Security Council)
• Dr. Sara Harmouch, CEO of H9 Defense.

The discussion was moderated by Dr. Sergio Altuna, Senior Fellow at the Program on Extremism and Project Lead for TITAN.

On May 11th, 2026, the Program on Extremism at the George Washington University held a panel discussion titled "ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Iran War," examining how global jihadist organizations are responding to, and attempting to exploit, the ongoing war in Iran. The panel featured Dr. Sarah Harmouch, CEO of H9 Defense, a national security research consultancy specializing in counterterrorism and geopolitical risk analysis, and Colin Smith, Coordinator of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team at the United Nations Security Council. The event was moderated by Dr. Sergio Altuna, Senior Fellow at the Program on Extremism.

Dr. Altuna opened by introducing the Program on Extremism’s TITAN Project, "Terrorism Insight through the Analysis of Narratives," a computational linguistics initiative that systematically analyzes a large-scale Arabic-language corpus of official al-Qaeda and Islamic State propaganda. Using this dataset, the Program first established a six-year baseline (2020–2025) measuring how prominently Shia- and Iran-related themes feature in each organization's messaging, then compared that baseline to messaging in the weeks following the war's outbreak in late February 2026. The baseline showed a sharp divergence between the two groups: for the Islamic State, sectarianism functions as a structural, central organizing principle, with Shia- and Iran-related references accounting for nearly a quarter of all enemy categories in its propaganda, second only to local regimes and ahead of the United States and Israel. For al-Qaeda, by contrast, such references made up less than 1% of enemy categories, with the group's messaging centered instead on Western intervention, occupation, and Palestine. That divergence sharpened further after the war began. The Islamic State treated the conflict as vindication, devoting eight of its nine weekly newsletters since late February to Iran or Shia Islam as a central theme and using the war to reinforce internal cohesion and doctrinal legitimacy. Al-Qaeda, meanwhile, responded largely with silence, with Iran nearly disappearing from its official output, a pattern Dr. Altuna described as reflecting the tension between al-Qaeda's ideological discomfort with Shiism and its long, complicated operational relationship with Iran.

Dr. Harmouch took up that relationship in detail, arguing that the more relevant question today is not whether al-Qaeda and Iran share ideology, but whether they share strategic interests, and that increasingly the answer is yes. She pointed to Saif al-Adel, al-Qaeda's presumed de facto leader, as a more pragmatic, less doctrinally rigid figure than his predecessors, with a military and intelligence background that has reshaped the group's relationships with Iran and Iranian proxies. She traced the two sides' ties back to the 1990s, when al-Adel's father-in-law Mustafa Hamid helped deepen cooperation, and through the post-9/11 period, when senior al-Qaeda figures relocated to Iran under varying degrees of restriction and tolerance. The relationship has shifted between cooperation and coercion over the years, including a rupture following Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's anti-Shia campaign in Iraq, but has trended toward transactional cooperation shaped by mutual utility rather than genuine strategic convergence. Dr. Harmouch cited recent examples of this pragmatism, including al-Qaeda in Yemen's shift from attacking the Houthis to tactically cooperating with them since 2022, reported Houthi payments to AQAP for a joint attack, and a cyber-jihadist group's cooperation with Iranian state cyber actors, arguing that Washington and other Western policy makers continue to underestimate Iran's willingness to form partnerships based on necessity rather than shared religious ideology.

Smith offered a monitoring perspective, cautioning that even the intelligence agencies the UN team regularly consults lack a clear, unified picture of how the war is affecting either group, in part because al-Qaeda and the Islamic State operate as fluid, decentralized networks rather than formal hierarchies. He noted that both groups' leaderships remain uncertain: the Islamic State's current leader is unconfirmed, and al-Qaeda has still not formally acknowledged Ayman al-Zawahiri's 2022 death, operating instead under presumed leader Saif al-Adel alongside influential figures such as Ibrahim al-Qosi. Both groups' public messaging on the war, he said, has been flatfooted: an early al-Qaeda statement on Gulf tensions was poorly received by supporters, and the Islamic State spokesperson's first statement in nearly two years, issued in late February, did not mention Iran at all, raising questions about possible disruption to the group's communications or leadership access. Smith characterized the Islamic State's subsequent messaging as centering on three themes: encouraging supporters to stay out of the US-Iran conflict, portraying al-Qaeda as compromised and no longer representative of the movement, and emphasizing Shia communities as the primary target. He cautioned that operational implications remain difficult to assess given the long lead times typical of directed attacks, but flagged several areas of concern, including Jaish al-Adl's activity inside Iran, the risk of Gulf states' security services being stretched across multiple threats, and continued activity by ISIS-Khorasan, which he assessed was likely responsible for a February attack on a Shia mosque in Islamabad. He identified AQAP as the affiliate most likely to pursue external operations, citing its improved finances, reported support from al-Shabaab, and deepening ties among AQAP, the Houthis, and al-Shabaab.

The discussion that followed covered a range of audience questions. Asked why Saif al-Adel might remain in Iran rather than Afghanistan, both speakers argued Iran remains the more viable option, given the Taliban's sensitivity about international recognition and reported signals that it does not want him on its territory. On the strength of ties among the Houthis, AQAP, and al-Shabaab, Smith noted that AQAP had regularized its finances through 2025 after a period of financial strain, partly with support from al-Shabaab, but flagged that a recent, uncharacteristic quiet in AQAP's propaganda output could reflect either consolidation or preparation for an attack. On the possibility of the Muslim Brotherhood serving as an Iranian proxy, Dr. Harmouch judged this unlikely in any direct sense, despite some ideological and logistical overlap. Asked about AQAP's autonomy from al-Qaeda's core leadership, Smith said the relationship had not shifted significantly as a result of the war, while cautioning against viewing these organizations through the lens of formal organizational charts rather than the tribal alliances and personal relationships that actually drive decision-making. On the ideological affinities between Sayyid Qutb's writings, translated into Persian after the Iranian revolution, and al-Qaeda's own ideology, Dr. Harmouch argued that current cooperation is driven primarily by shared short-term adversaries, namely Israel and the West, rather than durable ideological convergence, and that underlying Sunni-Shia tensions are likely to resurface once those common enemies recede. Asked to compare the two groups' strategic positions, both speakers assessed al-Qaeda as considerably larger and more resilient, citing UN estimates of roughly 24,000 to 33,000 fighters compared to 13,000 to 17,000 for the Islamic State, and argued that al-Qaeda's longer-term strategy of co-opting local grievances gives it less need to prove its relevance through visible attacks than the Islamic State, which faces greater pressure to demonstrate continued strength.