The terrorist attack in Australia has reignited urgent cautions from intelligence officers and counterterrorism specialists that global jihadist networks are expanding their influence, even as Western governments still depict groups such as ISIS as diminished or pulling back.
Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a longstanding tracker of jihadist movements, stated that this highlights a recurring miscalculation in Western capitals.
“We’ve always been hasty to declare terrorist groups defeated and irrelevant, and that’s completely untrue,” Roggio told Digital.
Roggio, who also serves as managing editor of The Long War Journal, noted that ISIS is still far from being dismantled despite the fall of its territorial “caliphate.”
“This Australian attack is definitive proof that the hasn’t been defeated,” he said. “These groups can still recruit and indoctrinate individuals. They still have safe havens.”
He cited ISIS’ ongoing presence. “I just reviewed the U.N. report. The United Nations says there are 2,000 ISIS fighters there,” Roggio stated. “That’s not how a defeated group operates.”
Israeli officials argue that the threat exposed in Australia is part of a larger global trend. Over the past year, they noted, plots have been tried or foiled across Europe, North America, and other regions — indicating a growing jihadist resurgence rather than isolated acts of violence.
Corri Zoli, a research associate at Syracuse University’s Forensic and National Security Sciences Institute, emphasized that Western governments must not overlook these signs.
“Governments are warned that there’s a sharp increase in terrorist targeting of religious minorities, especially those in the Jewish community and — a trend intelligence agencies say has sped up since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre that killed over 1,200 people in Israel,” Zoli explained.
Roggio concurs that the Israel-Hamas war has amplified radicalization and emboldened extremists globally.
“Israel’s war with Hamas has given people a new motive to attack Jews around the world,” Roggio said. “It’s an additional reason to radicalize.”
Intelligence officials told Digital that extremist groups across various ideologies are using the conflict to motivate supporters, boost propaganda, and justify attacks in the West. Terrorist organizations, they noted, are adapting rapidly — combining online incitement with in-person recruitment networks.
“Analysts at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center caution that these networks are searching for vulnerabilities in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the U.S., taking advantage of ideological environments that can radicalize people far from traditional war zones,” Zoli stated.
Zoli also pointed out that Australian authorities had admitted the attacker’s family had been under domestic intelligence surveillance. Zoli said the son “had been known to Australian officials for his extremism since 2019 and his link to extremist imam Wissam Haddad — a frequent violator of Australia’s racial hatred laws at the Al Madina Dawah Centre and a key figure in the Street Dawah Movement. [He] also had close connections to Isaac El Matari, who claimed to be an Australian ISIS commander and is currently imprisoned for insurgency and firearms crimes,” she added.
Roggio pushes back against the idea that individuals like these should be labeled “lone wolves.”
“I don’t agree with the entire ‘lone wolf’ term,” he said, asserting that extremist environments still offer ideological drive, direction, and validation even when attackers act independently.
A senior intelligence source put it even more bluntly: “Today is ISIS, tomorrow is Iran.”
Roggio also highlighted that the threat isn’t limited to ISIS but includes an interconnected network of jihadist groups.
“This isn’t just the Islamic State — it’s al Qaeda too,” he said. “We were quick to say al Qaeda was defeated in Afghanistan. If you read the U.N. reports, they’re still there. They’re allied with the Taliban.” “These groups aren’t defeated,” he continued. “They’re just working in different ways.”
Morgan Murphy, a national security expert, former Trump White House official, and current U.S. Senate candidate in Alabama, told Digital that “Due to an unprecedented flow of unvetted, Islamist, fighting-age male migrants into both Europe and the U.S., the West now faces an internal threat. This domestic risk weakens our global leadership and diverts resources that should be used to protect freedom overseas. This is a national security crisis caused by the short-sighted policies of leaders like President Obama and Chancellor Angela Merkel, who accepted so-called refugees without thinking about the long-term impacts on Western society.”
“Just because we want to say the war on terror is over doesn’t make it true,” Roggio said. “We wanted to stop our involvement in these wars, but the enemy gets to decide too. That’s exactly what we witnessed in Australia.”