"IS recognises no international borders; it wants to impose its caliphate wherever it chooses.
Yet IS does not consider the two countries to be separate battlefields; it claims its "caliphate" has effaced the post-colonial borders.
The attacker invoked terms used in ISIS propaganda about the group's ability to survive in the Middle East even as it loses its caliphate in neighboring Iraq and Syria.
Given the current momentum of ISIS and stated intentions to expand its caliphate, it may well attempt to increase its activity in northwest Syria and southern Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and southern Turkey.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights announced on Tuesday that the Islamic State has killed more than 2,000 Syrians off the battlefield since it declared its caliphate last June, using methods like beheading and stoning.
Hundreds have been executed by IS as it has extended its caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
Conflict between the two has increased since the summer of 2014, but for many critical months, Assad largely left Isis alone, allowing it to consolidate its "caliphate".
The three strikes came almost exactly on the first anniversary of Islamic State's declaration of its caliphate, and it is possible they were coordinated.
Isis wants continuing turmoil to boost its territory and resources and build up its caliphate, and it wants to create further terror and division as a means of recruitment, according to Sawers.
In order to reclaim these places for their citizens as well as to deprive ISIS of the territory it claims as its "caliphate," ground forces from a number of nations, including Russia and the United States, will ultimately have to be committed.
It was before ISIS created its caliphate, before Russian and U.S. involvement, and before the S.D.F.
