With American bombs again falling over Iraq—this time striking Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, recently renamed the “Islamic State”) positions near the Kurdish city of Irbil—the White House is finally bowing to the inevitable conclusion that this terror group poses a fundamental security challenge to the United States and its allies, and that it has to take direct action. But while all eyes are currently on Iraq, the real threat comes from just across the border—in Syria. After all, Syria is where ISIL developed into the fearsome jihadist juggernaut it is today, seizing vast swaths of territory, piles of heavy weapons and even oil fields. And it’s where much of ISIL’s thousands-strong fighting forces are still based.

Top administration officials have been hinting at this terrorist challenge for weeks—but have done little until now. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel minced no words on this topic when he told Congress last month, “[ISIL] is a threat to the United States. It is a threat, a clear threat to our partners in that area, and it is imminent.” In late June, Secretary of State John Kerry noted, “In light of what has happened in Iraq, we have even more to talk about in terms of the moderate opposition in Syria, which has the ability to be a very important player in pushing back against [ISIL’s] presence.” Note that Kerry didn’t mention toppling the Assad regime in Damascus—that aspiration seems to have faded away, and the priority is now stopping ISIL.


The point is clear: The United States is trying to get ahead of the next terrorist attack. If there’s a strike on the homeland, a diplomatic post goes up in flames in a Benghazi-style assault or an American ambassador is assassinated—and the trail leads back to Syria, Obama will have little choice but to take military action. And there’s a good chance a Syria-based attack is coming.

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The United States has been ruthlessly putting the screws to al Qaeda and its affiliates in just about every corner of the globe, through the security services of local countries or through direct action—from the Philippines to Pakistan to Yemen to Somalia. Everywhere, that is, except Syria.

In Syria, al Qaeda-linked groups in the form of ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) control large areas, including the provincial seat of Raqqa governorate—home to some 200,000 people. As the terrorism analysts Doug Ollivant and Brian Fishman have noted, ISIL “holds territory, provides limited services, dispenses a form of justice (loosely defined), most definitely has an army, and flies its own flag.” While these groups are indeed fighting other anti-Assad forces elsewhere, ISIL and JN have been left more or less alone to administer their territory as they see fit.

And these hard-core extremists are on the march. ISIL’s offensive to capture major population centers across the border in Iraq, launched in June, has infused the organization with new men, arms and cash—not to mention prestige among the wider community of Islamic extremists. Although some of these resources will remain in Iraq, some have already flowed into Syria, including T-55 tanks and American-made Humvees pilfered from the Iraqi Army, bolstering an already effective fighting force.

Some might argue that while ISIL may menace Arabs and Kurds in the Middle East, it does not yet threaten the United States directly. That’s certainly what President Obama implied late last year when he said dismissively, “if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.” But the group has also reportedly teamed up with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to build undetectable bombs onto airplanes, which caused Homeland Security officials to implement “enhanced security measures” at airports abroad in July.

These extremists probably aren’t content to pave Deir ez-Zur’s roads or run Raqqa’s sanitation department. Then predecessor group to ISIL and JN, al Qaeda in Iraq, has had a long history launching attacks abroad. These include the 2005 bombings of western hotels in Amman, Jordan that killed 60, an attack on the USS Kearsage and the USS Ashland earlier that year, and even a failed 2007 series of attacks in London and Glasgow’s airport. More recently, in 2012, Jordanian authorities thwarted a plot by operatives trained and equipped in Syria to strike the U.S. Embassy in Amman and murder American diplomats. And it appears the man who slaughtered four people at a Jewish museum in Brussels in May had fought with jihadists in Syria.

A massive 2013 jailbreak from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq helped the extremist cause immeasurably, allowing hundreds of hardened jihadists to reenter the fight on both sides of the Syria-Iraq border. It’s a good bet that some of these killers are now planning strikes against targets in the Middle East and beyond. After all, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress in January that Syria-based groups have "aspirations for attacks on the homeland."

These groups might also have a stealth army that can cross European and American borders with ease. A few thousand jihadists in Syria are thought to be European citizens, and there are dozens of Americans fighting there today. Even if most of these fellows return home to a peaceful, humdrum existence, it’ll only take a handful of these Syria vets—hardened by conflict, trained in urban combat and indoctrinated in extremist thought—to cause mayhem back home.

In this post-Benghazi political climate, if an American post goes up in flames, the American public won’t tolerate it. Congress won’t tolerate it. And this president cannot tolerate it. He will have to act decisively and with force.

Crushing these particular terrorist groups will require a robust intelligence-collection network within Syria to determine which targets to strike. Luckily, the United States isn’t starting from scratch. FBI Director James Comey, Jr. alluded to a classified plan to confront Syria-based terrorists in congressional testimony in May. The NSA is also collecting terabytes of signals intelligence from Syria. Presumably American military and intelligence operatives are working in bordering nations as well.

Other countries involved in supporting anti-Assad groups—Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc.—presumably are collecting useful information too. But it’s doubtful this disjointed, hands-off effort would be sufficient to fatally degrade the hardcore jihadist groups. It will require more direct action.

To be sure, most Americans oppose getting dragged into yet another conflict in the Middle East. Yet they are also acutely concerned with the threat of terrorism. And striking a limited target set in Iraq will hardly affect ISIL’s growing strength in Syria.

President Obama knows this and is currently mulling a menu of politically difficult options—as he told reporters earlier this summer, “ I don’t rule out anything, because we do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria, for that matter.” (Emphasis added.) He also told ABC’s “This Week,” “There are going to be times where we take strikes against the organizations that can do us harm.”

It is well and good that the president said he won’t “rule out anything,” but the reality is that multiple jihadist groups already have a permanent foothold in Syria. As one State Department official said Thursday, ISIL is a “militarily proficient organization… [requiring] a level of sophistication in terms of a military response.” If there were any doubt about this, ISIL in Syria is now strong enough to overrun fortified military bases—in the last three weeks alone, the group has taken the Syrian army’s 17th Division Base and the 93rd Brigade base, killing dozens of troops and capturing heavy weaponry, including tanks. Will ISIL, or another Syria-based jihadi group, try to strike American targets before Obama leaves office in January 2017? If past actions predict future behavior, then the answer is probably yes.

Would the administration respond to a terror attack on America or Americans with airstrikes—or perhaps more—of its own? That too is likely in the cards, given that the United States just bombed Islamic State positions to help our Kurdish allies.

Hopefully, America’s airstrikes near Irbil will prove to be the high-water mark for ISIL’s ability to export its fanatical ideology. But the group has shown itself to be an adaptable, ruthless foe bent on destroying its enemies—including the United States. Since that’s the case, it’s only a matter of time before this White House decides that America must strike Syria as well.