Story highlights Paul Cruickshank: Video of Jordanian pilot being burned alive a calculated move

But ISIS video has created significant backlash from Sunnis in region, he says

In the long run, ISIS' brutality is not a winning strategy, Cruickshank says

Paul Cruickshank is an analyst on terrorism for CNN and the co-author of "Agent Storm: My Life Inside al Qaeda and the CIA." The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) The barbaric, elaborately stage-managed video that showed Jordanian pilot Moath al-Kasasbeh being burned alive was a calculated move by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to weaken the resolve of Jordan and other Sunni Arab powers that have joined the U.S.-led coalition against the terror group. But the early signs indicate the video, which may have been shot a month ago, has had the opposite result, creating a significant backlash from Sunnis in the region.

Spreading terror has worked before for ISIS, allowing it to punch above its weight. In the weeks before launching an assault on Mosul, Iraq, in June, the group released a series of gory videos showing the militants brutalizing and killing Iraqi soldiers they had captured. It put the scare in the Iraqi army. When ISIS fighters attacked Mosul, Iraqi soldiers turned and fled despite greatly outnumbering the attackers.

Al-Baghdadi was no doubt hoping to pull off the same trick this time. The release of the video to coincide with Jordanian King Abdullah II's visit to the United States may have been deliberate -- the optics of the Jordanian King in Washington served ISIS' narrative of the kingdom being a vassal of the "Crusaders."

Paul Cruickshank

But ISIS appears to have badly miscalculated. Al-Kasasbeh was from a prominent Sunni tribal family in Jordan, and his killing has sparked outrage. And if support in Jordan for King Abdullah's involvement in the anti-ISIS coalition was lukewarm before, it is now red-hot. There has also been outrage across the Sunni Arab world, with the head of Egypt's Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam's most prestigious center of learning, reportedly calling for ISIS fighters to be crucified

Indeed, while the video has electrified ISIS' most hard-line supporters around the world, and will likely help persuade foreign fighters to join it rather than al Qaeda, it is also likely to shrink its potential pool of recruits. The reality is that burning to death a fellow Muslim is so at odds with mainstream Islamic teaching that even some ISIS sympathizers may have second thoughts. It's a point underscored in November when Sulaimaan Samuel, a mentor in a UK Home Office scheme to prevent radicalization, said ISIS' beheading of British aid worker Alan Henning was putting off young British Muslims from joining the group