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Since December 2025, the Islamic State (IS), its Khurasan affiliate (ISKP), and aligned pro-IS media outlets have been waging a coordinated propaganda campaign around the Bondi Beach attack in Sydney, in which a father and son opened fire on a Jewish Hanukkah gathering, killing and wounding approximately 15 people. The campaign repeatedly invokes the Israel-Palestine conflict, framing the attack as retaliation for Israeli actions in Gaza and positioning violence against Jewish civilians in the West as inseparable from the broader struggle over Jerusalem. Across four major publications spanning December 2025 through June 2026, the outlets have moved from an initial celebration of the attack to systematic operational incitement, theological argumentation, and direct calls to replicate attacks against Western targets. Running beneath and alongside the formal publications, and even praise given to the shooters in the IS spokesman’s latest audio address, IS supporter networks have amplified the campaign online, producing unofficial propaganda content, circulating attack footage set to nasheeds, and calling for more media producers to assist prospective attackers. The publications analyzed here are the Islamic State’s al-Naba newspaper (Issues 526 and 527), ISKP’s Khurasan Voice (Issue 48), and the Al-Iman Media Center’s article “Attacks in Australia.” Together, they constitute not a media echo chamber but a division of labor, with each outlet contributing a distinct layer of a unified radicalization architecture.

Al-Naba Issues 526 and 527: Celebration, Incitement, and Operational Doctrine

Al-Naba is the Islamic State’s primary Arabic-language weekly newspaper, and its two editorials responding to Bondi, “The Pride of Sydney” in Issue 526 (December 2025) and “The Season of Terror” in Issue 527 (December 2025), represent the backbone of the campaign. Issue 526 arrived within weeks of the attack; Issue 527 followed six months later, timed to another Western holiday season. Read together, they constitute something close to a campaign manual: the first establishes theological and organizational framing, the second converts that framing into explicit operational guidance.

Issue 526 opens not with celebration of Bondi specifically but with a broader declaration about the IS brand and its relationship to attacks it does not formally claim. The editorial preemptively dismisses the criticism that greets every IS-linked operation: that the group is fraudulent, its claims opportunistic, its attackers misguided, by treating such criticism as confirmation of the attackers’ authenticity:

No operation carried out by the Islamic State in the heart of the lands of the kuffar has ever escaped doubt, accusations, and betrayal: whether the Islamic State officially claimed it, implicitly praised it, or deliberately remained silent and left the enemy confused and hesitant; whether the attackers received direct guidance and support or were merely the product of its incitement and methodology; or whether the targets were murtaddin, Crusaders, or even the accursed Jews. All your heroics, O strangers, will never please the rabble and the mob.

The rhetorical move here is deliberate. By folding all possible responses to an attack (claim, implicit praise, silence) into a single coherent IS strategy, the editorial makes the organization’s relationship to any given operation permanently unfalsifiable. It also pre-insulates future attackers against the community disapproval they will inevitably face. The editorial anticipates condemnation and frames it as spiritual noise.

The editorial’s treatment of the Bondi attack itself is brief but pointed. It presents the attack as the direct product of standing IS doctrine, years of consistent instruction to target Jewish and Christian holiday gatherings, and positions the attackers as men who obeyed where others equivocated:

Today, Jews bleed in the streets of Australia after the zealous answered the call and implemented the recommendations to target holidays and gatherings. They armed themselves with the prophetic method and proceeded without turning back, plunging bareheaded into Hanukkah and turning it into mourning. They did not listen to the voices of the rabble among impostors and fools who spared Jewish blood through methods of weakness and dilution.

The phrase “implemented the recommendations” is significant. IS is not claiming credit for directing the attack; it is claiming credit for the doctrine that shaped it. This is a meaningful distinction. It allows the organization to take organizational credit while maintaining plausible distance from operational involvement, and it signals to prospective attackers that inspiration from IS publications is itself sufficient to constitute membership in the IS project. The editorial makes this explicit when it describes IS’s recruitment model as methodical: the organization, it says, “recruits them methodically, fills them with morale, then throws them into the throat of its enemy, bleeding him and striking him fatally, leaving him unable to escape this nightmare.”

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On 19 January 2026, Islamic State Khurasan Province (ISKP) carried out an attack on a Chinese restaurant in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing and wounding a number of Chinese nationals. The attack targeted an establishment located in a heavily fortified central district in close proximity to diplomatic and government facilities. ISKP subsequently claimed responsibility and used the operation as the centrepiece of a lengthy propaganda article published in late April in its Voice of Khurasan magazine under the title “Who Will Take Revenge for the Uyghur Muslims.”

The article was structured as both a justification of the January attack and a forward-looking declaration of intent. Opening with a direct address to the broader Islamic community, the magazine framed the operation as an act of religious retribution on behalf of persecuted Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, China. ISKP declared:

“First we congratulate the entire Islamic Ummah on this heroic attack by the Islamic State in which lillahilhamd the blood of the Murtad Taliban and communist Chinese was shed together.”

The article went on to address Uyghur Muslims directly, positioning ISKP as their sole defender in the face of Taliban and Pakistani inaction:

“Brothers of the Uyghurs: We answer the cries, wails, sighs, and captivity of your innocent children! Do not grieve; if the Pakistanis and the murtadd Taliban, instead of defending you, sided with the Chinese communists, you are not without brothers! Lillahilhamd, we are your brothers. This attack was a small sample of the revenge and retribution for the Uyghur Muslims; from now on, expect even harder and worse days!”

The broader ideological thrust of the piece was to construct China as a structural and irreconcilable enemy of Islam, delegitimise the Taliban’s governing authority through its engagement with Beijing, and normalise further anti-Chinese violence as a religious obligation. The following analysis examines the key narrative components of the article across six thematic areas.

Construction of China as a Structural Enemy

The text does not treat China as a contingent adversary but as a structurally defined enemy. The article asserts:

“It is clear to the whole world that the Chinese government is a kafir, secular communist regime. It does not accept Islam, it is an enemy of the Khilafah, and it is counted among the staunchest enemies of Islam.”

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In the ongoing clashes in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah has increasingly relied on FPV (First-Person View) kamikaze drones against the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). These drones, which gained widespread prominence during the Russia–Ukraine war and have since been employed in numerous conflict zones, have become one of Hezbollah’s most frequently used weapons. They have been utilized extensively in attacks targeting both military positions in southern Lebanon and locations in northern Israel.

In attacks carried out using these drones, the group has targeted a wide range of objectives, including Merkava main battle tanks, armored vehicles such as the Namer APC, launchers of Iron Dome air defense systems, military vehicles, and Israeli soldiers.

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An article released on Tech Haven on June 1 by Al‑Iman Media Center, a new, unofficial Islamic State–linked propaganda outlet, titled “The Alienation of Muslims in China,” offers a stark and highly charged portrayal of the situation facing Uyghur Muslims in China. From its opening lines, which describe “millions of Uyghur Muslims…languish[ing] under the yoke of the most horrific process of identity and religious eradication in the modern era,” the piece signals that it is not simply reporting events, but constructing a sweeping narrative of civilizational conflict, oppression, and religious persecution.

This messaging reflects a broader shift in Islamic State propaganda. Since around 2021, the group and its affiliated media networks have increasingly focused on China, elevating the issue of Uyghur Muslims in their publications and rhetoric. References to “East Turkestan” and depictions of Chinese authorities as central enemy figures in a global struggle have become more frequent, alongside explicit threats and calls for retaliation. The Al‑Iman article fits squarely within this trajectory, amplifying established themes while intensifying their language.

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Official and volunteer translators of Islamic State (IS) propaganda have made attempts to rebound in 2026, after laying the groundwork in the second half of 2025. Their current drive aims to undo the effects from 18 months of successful counter-terrorist operations that significantly hindered the terrorist organization’s multi-language propaganda output. While groups close to the organizational core of Islamic State have led these efforts, other less recognized and individualistic endeavors have also contributed.

In June 2024, an international law enforcement operation shut down the I’lam Foundation, one of the largest multilingual translators and distributors of pro-IS publications accessible on the surface and dark webs. Before the servers were seized, the I’lam Foundation hosted propaganda in more than thirty languages on its website, including the main languages of Central and South Asia, Africa, foreign fighters (e.g., Albanian, Uyghur, Indonesian), and external operations countries (i.e., English, Spanish, German). I’lam’s closure placed more importance on Fursan al-Tarjuma, a collective of roughly a dozen pro-IS translation foundations.

Fursan al-Tarjuma launched in March 2023 with 14 media foundations translating 18 languages. Most foundations focused on one language, relevant to a province or major foreign fighter group, but IS-Khorasan Province’s (ISKP) Al Azaim Media Foundation translated multiple Central and South Asian languages. Fursan al-Tarjuma is central to the current attempted resurgence.

In the months after I’lam Foundation was shuttered, additional arrests around the world stopped the production and dissemination of propaganda by both “munasir” (meaning: volunteer) and high-profile individuals.

One of the largest contingents of arrested volunteer translators was tied to IS’s Andalus region, referring to the historical Muslim state on the Iberian Peninsula. Most of those arrested or otherwise shut down, however, had resided in Latin America. “Abu Bakar al-Uruguayi,” a 14-year-old supporter, established and promoted multiple Spanish-language and Latin American groups online. He was tied to Thiago José Silva Barboza de Paula, a Brazilian recruiter behind the “Comando860” network active on multiple social media platforms. Finally, a Mexican youth known online as both “YihadAmerica” and “Abu Ibrahim” was twice forced to shutter Spanish-language social media channels in early 2025.

Other media munasirs inhibited by investigations and authorities were based in Europe or North America, translating into Dutch, French, German, or a variety of other languages as part of a volunteer media group.

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Since the outbreak of the US/Israel–Iran war on February 28, 2026, the Islamic State (IS) has treated the conflict as both a propaganda windfall and an operational opportunity. Through a sequence of Al‑Naba editorials and a renewed tempo of inspired plotting, the group has attempted to reinsert itself into the center of global jihadist dynamics and to re-energize attacks in the Western homelands. IS‑linked attackers have again struck the U.S. homeland, with the Old Dominion University shooting standing out as the most significant successful operation since the January 1, 2025, New Orleans truck attack on Bourbon Street. At the same time, the narrative constructed around the war and Ramadan is explicitly framed as global, which heightens the threat not only to the United States but also to Europe and the broader West, where IS has a long record of exploiting external wars to incite “lone actor” and small‑cell operations. The recently disrupted plot in Spain, linked to IS branches in Somalia and the Sahel, further demonstrates that the current wave of incitement is knitting together multiple regional branches into a threat network that directly targets Europe. The IS Khurasan Province (ISKP) arrest in Italy earlier this year further indicates the continued expansion of the organization’s more multivectored external operations strategy and threat to the West.

IS Incitement Propaganda and Operational Momentum Leading Up to the Conflict
In the months leading up to the US/Israel vs Iran conflict, the Islamic State’s 2025 attack and plot campaign created a foundation for intensified calls for violence against Jews, Christians, and the wider Western public across North America, Europe, and the Pacific. From New Orleans and Bondi Beach to Villach, Berlin, Mulhouse, Bielefeld, Manchester, and disrupted conspiracies in the United States, Europe, and Turkey, the group repeatedly targeted religious holidays, memorials, markets, nightlife districts, and other soft targets, thus turning Christmas, New Year, and Jewish festivals into focal points for terror. Bondi, the Hanukkah mass shooting at Sydney’s waterfront that killed 15 and injured more than 40 on December 14, 2025, became both the apex of this wave and a springboard for renewed incitement in early 2026, as IS media and supporter channels treated it as a model for lone‑actor and small‑cell operations.

Al‑Naba quickly codified Bondi’s significance. “The Pride of Sydney” celebrated the “glorious deed of Sydney,” boasted that “the Jews are bleeding in Australia’s streets,” and urged believers who had absorbed IS’ “jihadist code” online to attack Jews and “Crusaders” at festivals and gatherings, presenting online guidance as sufficient for a single reader to “set out like the whirlwind” against synagogues, churches, and holiday crowds. A subsequent editorial, “The Season of Terrorism,” framed Christmas, New Year, and Jewish holidays as a “season of terror and anxiety” for “Crusader” societies, argued that heightened security and disrupted celebrations showed the battle had been “transferred to their homes,” and urged low‑tech violence such as vehicle rammings and attacks with heavy tools so that “there be a kill with every blow.” These texts explicitly folded Jews and Christians into a single enemy category “from Yobi to Bondi” and treated any Western crowd as legitimate blood.

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It had previously been identified and examined as one of the kamikaze drones (One-Way Attack UAVs, OWA-UAVs) employed by pro-Iranian groups in their recent attacks. (Articles: Kamikaze Drones Used by Pro-Iranian Militant Groups in Iraq and Lebanon and Islamic Resistance in Iraq Using Stealth Kamikaze Drones)

The first guided missile to be introduced in the conflict was a short-range ballistic missile known as “The Striker” (Arabic: “Al-Qāriʿ”). It initially appeared in propaganda footage released by “Guardians of Blood Brigades” (Arabic: “Saraya Awliya al-Dam”), a subgroup affiliated with the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. In the following period, it was used in attacks targeting U.S. bases in Iraq during the escalation of hostilities in the region.

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On March 25, 2026, Morocco dismantled an Islamic State (IS)‑affiliated cell operating across its northern cities and Spain — an operation that offers a concrete glimpse of how Islamic State Somalia (IS‑S) is becoming embedded in a wider ecosystem of transnational support structures that stretch from East Africa to Europe. While the underlying case centers on a joint Moroccan-Spanish operation led by Morocco’s Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations and Spanish security services, it also illustrates the kind of recruitment, online indoctrination, and travel facilitation pipelines that IS‑S increasingly seeks to exploit as it internationalizes and looks beyond its Puntland strongholds towards North African and European networks. In this sense, the March 2026 Morocco-Spain cell can be read as part of the broader architecture through which IS‑S content circulates into diaspora communities, sympathizers seek to move toward active combat zones, and intermediaries help connect would‑be recruits to Islamic State nodes abroad, including in Somalia.

Viewed through the lens of IS‑S’s evolution, the activities described in this case underscore three overlapping threat vectors: external operations, guided plots, and inspired attacks. External operations become more plausible as cells in Morocco and Spain develop the capability to channel money, recruits, or operational information to and from hubs like IS‑S, effectively serving as forward extensions of a Somalia-centered command and facilitation system. Guided plots are enabled when individuals in such cells receive direction, encouragement, or technical input from actors linked to IS‑S, whether on target selection, timing, or attack methods, turning local networks into instruments of a geographically distant leadership. Finally, the focus on propaganda, online radicalization, and recruitment highlights the enduring risk of inspired attacks, in which self‑radicalized supporters in Morocco, Spain, or elsewhere in Europe consume IS‑S branded or aligned content and then act on its calls to violence without direct tasking, making the March 2026 Moroccan-Spanish case a warning sign of how IS‑S’s growing reach into European spaces can translate into diverse and hard-to-predict attack scenarios. Examining this case also serves as an entry point to have a closer examination of how IS‑S itself emerged and evolved into a pivotal node within the global Islamic State movement.

IS-S has evolved from a small splinter group in Puntland into one of the most strategically important components of the international Islamic State organization and global movement, but this rise now coincides with heavy military pressure and battlefield losses. Since late 2024, a large-scale Puntland campaign, often referred to as Operation Hilaac and backed by U.S. airpower and other international support, has overrun key strongholds in the Cal Miskaad and Al Miskad mountains, killed hundreds of fighters including many foreigners, captured senior commanders, and reduced IS‑S’s territorial presence in Bari region by well over half according to Puntland officials, forcing surviving cadres into scattered hideouts and stressing the group’s command and control and recruitment pipelines. Yet even as a heavily degraded IS‑S absorbs these losses on the ground, it continues to operate as a regional and transnational command, financial, and propaganda hub with a history of international recruitment, overseas facilitation, and plots, and this combination of attrition at home and persistence in its transnational functions underpins its emerging role as a concrete external operations threat, particularly to Europe and North America.

Historical Background on IS-S’s Internationalization
IS‑S emerged in October 2015 when Abdulqadir Mumin defected from al-Shabaab with roughly thirty fighters in Puntland and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State’s central leadership. Initially a marginal faction, its prominence rose after it briefly captured the port town of Qandala in 2016 and was recognized as a province in 2017. It consolidated two main operational zones: mountain strongholds in Puntland’s Al Madow range and urban cells in Mogadishu, from which it has conducted dozens of attacks annually against Somali security forces, Puntland units, AU missions, and government officials. Despite a modest manpower estimate of 500 to 700 fighters, IS‑S’s strategic importance has grown disproportionately to its size because it increasingly functions as a regional hub for coordination, finance, and transnational recruitment.

This transformation centers on the Al Karrar regional office, established in northern Somalia by late 2018 under Mumin’s leadership. Al Karrar acts as a combined command and financial center responsible for Islamic State activity across eastern, central, and southern Africa, including Islamic State Central Africa Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Mozambique Province. United States and United Nations reporting now describe Al Karrar as one of the movement’s most important leadership and revenue generation structures worldwide, with some assessments suggesting that Mumin may hold a broader global role beyond Somalia.

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On the night of March 11 to 12, fighters linked to the Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP) mounted a coordinated assault on Chinese gold mining facilities in Muchacha and nearby Mavuvu in Mambasa territory, Ituri province, in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). People were killed or kidnapped while others fled the area. This ISCAP attack on Chinese run-mining sites in the DRC is notable not only for its brutality, but because it may mark an expansion of Islamic State’s anti-China campaign from Asia into Africa, where previous IS attacks on Chinese interests and nationals have been almost exclusively concentrated in South and Central Asia. The operation in northeastern Ituri therefore needs to be read alongside a nearly decade-long record of Islamic State (IS), and especially Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), targeting Chinese nationals, projects, and symbols as part of a broader propaganda and operational strategy that casts China as both an oppressor of Muslims in Xinjiang and an exploitative power across conflict-affected regions. Furthermore, it marks the second IS attack against Chinese interests in less than two months — the other being a suicide bombing in Kabul in mid January.

For this latest attack, soldiers from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which had pledged allegiance to ISCAP, mounted the assault in Ituri. Targets included installations linked to the Chinese Kimia or Kimiya Mining Enterprise and MCC Resources, which operate industrial gold sites in the area. The attackers first struck Congolese army positions guarding the perimeter, then overran the mine itself, according to official statements and subsequent reporting. Islamic State propaganda released soon after claimed responsibility and circulated photographs showing fighters attacking the barracks, entering the Chinese-run site, torching vehicles and heavy equipment, and burning workers’ living quarters and camp structures. Images and local reports described extensive destruction: trucks, tractors, processing infrastructure, accommodation blocks burnt, and with the Muchacha site left heavily damaged.

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It had previously been identified and examined as one of the kamikaze drones (One-Way Attack UAVs, OWA-UAVs) employed by pro-Iranian groups in their recent attacks. (Article: Kamikaze Drones Used by Pro-Iranian Militant Groups in Iraq and Lebanon)

More recently, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI) has begun employing a new model of kamikaze drones. These drones are the Iranian-manufactured “Hadid-110”.

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Following the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the intense strikes carried out by Israel and the United States against Iran, several Iran-backed groups operating in Iraq and Lebanon launched a series of attacks targeting Israel, the United States’ assets abroad, and their allies, some of which were carried out using kamikaze drones, also known as One-Way Attack Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (OWA-UAVs).

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The Kurdistan Freedom Party (Partî Azadîyê Kurdistan, PAK) is an armed separatist militant organization operating in Iran, while its headquarters are located within the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq.

The PAK organization maintains cells in several cities across Iran, including the capital, Tehran, and carried out a number of armed attacks against Iranian security forces during the anti-regime protests that began in December 2025.

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A deadly bombing at the Chinese Noodle restaurant in Kabul’s Shahr‑e‑Naw district, which killed at least six Afghans and one Chinese national and injured many others, marks the latest flashpoint in the steadily intensifying confrontation between the Islamic State’s Khorasan Province (ISKP) and China. Claimed by the local Islamic State branch, the attack struck a venue run by a Chinese Muslim from Xinjiang in a heavily guarded area of the capital, starkly illustrating both the vulnerability of Chinese nationals in Afghanistan and the limits of Taliban security guarantees at a moment when Beijing is pressing Kabul to deliver stronger protection for its citizens and investments.

The official Islamic State (IS) claim noted that the suicide bomber “entered the hotel and stayed there for nearly 30 minutes, waiting for a large number of Chinese to gather, before detonating his explosive vest among them, causing significant destruction to the hotel.” “Chinese hotel visited by Chinese nationals in the secure “Shahr-e Naw” area, which houses embassies and government offices and is inhabited by officials and foreigners in the center of Kabul”. The statement concludes by putting China on notice, asserting “The Islamic State in Afghanistan has placed Chinese nationals on its target list, especially in light of the increasing crimes committed by the Chinese government against the persecuted Uyghur Muslims.”

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For over a decade, Islamic State (IS) and its affiliates, such as Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), have refined a strategic doctrine that transforms great power rivalry, regional conflicts, and stretched Western security resources into operational advantages. As geopolitical tensions intensify and great power competition accelerates across multiple theaters, U.S.-China strategic rivalry in the Indo-Pacific over Taiwan and trade wars, Russia-West confrontation in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Western retrenchment from the Sahel enabling Russian influence expansion, and regional power struggles involving Iran, Israel, and Gulf states, IS has positioned its jihadist operations within these fault lines to maximum effect.

The recent Al-Naba editorials (issues 526, 527, and 528) released between December 11, 2025, and January 1, 2026, represent not an isolated surge in incitement, but the culmination of a long-established pattern: capitalizing on divided attention, stretched resources, and the inability of competing powers to maintain unified counterterrorism coordination. This doctrine, articulated through sophisticated propaganda, validated through high-profile attacks, and sustained across multiple theaters, reveals IS as an organization that has internalized the mechanics of asymmetric warfare in a multipolar world fractured by competing strategic priorities.

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The beginning of 2026 was marked in Germany by a serious attack on the country’s power grid, affecting hundreds of thousands of people in Berlin during the cold early days of January, followed by another attack that got less attention, just outside of Düsseldorf in the village of Erkrath. Both attacks were acts of arson claimed by “left-wing” groups.

In the early morning hours of January 3rd, electrical distribution cables crossing a bridge over the Teltow Canal leading to the gas-fired Lichterfelde power plant were seen in flames. What was soon determined to be an act of arson disrupted power to some 45,000 homes and 2,200 businesses across southwest Berlin—including hospitals and other critical infrastructure—according to German and Western news outlets. For many, the power took up to five days to be restored. The attack was claimed by a known militant eco-activist group, Vulkangruppe—or “Volcano Group”. They denied that so many people would be affected when they released their claim the following day. Major news outlets further report that the effects of the outage included burglaries, train stoppages, and heating outages.

Vulkangruppe has been active since circa 2011 and has a notable resume of similar non-lethal sabotage actions, mainly arson attacks, targeting infrastructure, Big Tech, industrialists, and other perceived enemies of the earth and the environment. In 2024, they attacked an electricity pylon using an improvised incendiary device (IID), shutting down a Berlin-area Tesla auto factory for several days.

It is important, in this article, to examine sections of the claim that was released on an anti-authoritarian website the morning after the direct action. The header for the claim, which was repeated, reads “Shutting down fossil fuel power plants is manual labor. Courage. Militant New Year’s wishes.” It then begins:

We can stop the overexploitation of the earth. The earth is exhausted, depleted, burned, mistreated, set on fire, violated, destroyed by the greed of energy […] We know that we must stop this destruction […] Tonight, we successfully sabotaged the gas power plant in the Berlin district of Lichterfelde. There were power outages in the wealthy districts of Wannsee, Zehlendorf, and Nikolassee. The goal of the action was not the power outages, but the fossil fuel sector. We apologize to the less wealthy people in southwestern Berlin. For the many villa owners in these districts, our compassion is limited […] The attack on the gas power plant is an act of self-defense and international solidarity with all those who protect the earth and life. Infrastructures that serve the ‘technological attack’ and promote the destruction of the earth can be sabotaged. Fossil fuel energy production can be stopped. Smart cities, which is what Berlin is supposed to become, can be avoided […] For us, it is clear that we have at all times ruled out any risk of endangering human lives…

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It is widely known that the National Bolivarian Armed Forces of Venezuela (Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana, FANB) have recently acquired a variety of weapons from several countries, most notably Russia and China. These acquisitions include MANPADS, Surface-to-Air missile systems, sniper rifles, and automatic rifles.

In a recently released video, several Venezuelan soldiers are equipped with 7.62×39mm KLF assault rifles manufactured by Iran’s Defense Industries Organization (DIO).

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Islamic State’s (IS) 2025 campaign of attacks and plots in the West shows how the group continues to weaponize online spaces to deadly effect, targeting Jewish, Christian, and general populations across North America, Europe, and the Pacific. From New Orleans and Bondi Beach to Villach, Berlin, Mulhouse, Bielefeld, Manchester, and disrupted conspiracies in Canada, the United States and across Europe, IS propaganda has turned sacred times and ordinary public spaces into preferred theatres of terror, with attack planning repeatedly intersecting with Christmas, New Year and Jewish holidays.

Islamic State has capitalized on the post–October 7 environment by sharpening its focus on explicitly anti‑Jewish and anti‑Christian violence, casting both communities as core enemies and urging followers to strike them “in their homes, markets and festivals.” This is not a new departure but an extension of a longstanding position: from its inception IS has vilified, threatened and repeatedly targeted Jews, Christians and surrounding Western publics in its propaganda and operations, and now presents any crowd of Western civilians—Jewish, Christian or otherwise—as a legitimate target so long as it can be labeled part of a “Crusader” society.

Religious and Holiday Targeting Across the West

The Bondi Beach shooting, where a father and son killed 15 people and injured more than 40 at a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s waterfront, illustrates the convergence of offline violence, religious hatred and online incitement. Authorities confirmed IS inspired the attack, and analysis notes the pair’s travel to the southern Philippines, a hub for IS-aligned militants, before returning to target Jewish worshippers and families at a festival of faith; Bondi immediately reverberated across IS-linked channels, where the attackers were praised and copycat violence during the holiday period was openly encouraged.

This reaction was codified in a new al-Naba editorial titled “The Pride of Sydney” that framed the “glorious deed of Sydney” as a model for future lone-actor attacks on Jews and Christians. The text dismisses critics who claim IS does not truly fight the Jews, boasts that “the Jews [are] bleeding in Australia’s streets,” and urges supporters who have absorbed its “jihadist code” online to seek out Jewish and “Crusader” targets at festivals and gatherings, presenting cyberspace-delivered guidance as a deliberate strategy in which a single believer who reads IS material in Arabic or translation can “set out like the whirlwind” against synagogues, churches and holiday crowds with little preparation, leaving Western states in what it calls an “unending conundrum of attrition.”

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AQAP’s latest statement fits into a broader trend of Al‑Qaeda branches adopting increasingly hostile rhetoric and kinetic action against Chinese interests, even when Uyghurs or Xinjiang are not explicitly mentioned. Beyond AQAP’s own messaging, groups such as Al‑Shabaab have used attacks, kidnappings, and propaganda to frame China as an adversarial power whose economic and political footprint in Africa is fair game for jihadist violence, while JNIM has targeted foreign workers without building a specific anti‑China narrative. As China rises as a great‑power rival to the United States and deepens its influence in Muslim‑majority regions, militant focus on Beijing is likely to intensify.

AQAP’s New Threat to China

In a recent audio statement circulated on jihadist channels, AQAP emir Sheikh Saad bin Atef al‑Awlaqi opens by praising “all the heroic operations carried out against Jews and Americans throughout the world,” describing them as part of a righteous struggle against a “dual evil.” He urges “every honorable and zealous Muslim, and every free, courageous, and noble person” to “take the initiative and hasten to eradicate this dual evil: Jews and Americans, wherever they may be found,” branding them “the root, substance, and filthy swamp of all calamity” and “the raw material, root, and vile seed of evil.”

Al‑Awlaqi then pivots to China, declaring that “the pagan, infidel Chinese regime must understand that we are monitoring every move it makes against our Uyghur Muslim brothers.”

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In 2025, Russian forces conducted several operations against Islamic State (IS) cells operating in Moscow, Pskov, and Dagestan. As a result of these operations, numerous IS militants were killed, and various weapons were seized.

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On March 31, Al-Qaeda’s Somalian branch, Al-Shabaab, released a 32-minute-long video through its Al-Kataib propaganda outlet. The footage includes propaganda against the Somali government and also displays the group's militants training at the Sheekh Bashiir Sheekh Yuusuf military camp.

During the training, militants were seen using more than one Chinese-made 12.7x108mm Type 85 heavy machine gun.

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