Terrorism is changing, and our understanding of terrorism must change with it.
For much of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, governments learned how to confront hierarchical terrorist organisations, disrupt financing, dismantle networks, strengthen aviation security, improve intelligence sharing and prevent spectacular attacks. Considerable progress was achieved. Yet the threat did not disappear. It adapted.
The scale of the surviving threat is measurable. The 2026 U.S. Annual Threat Assessment estimates that al-Qaeda and its affiliates retain approximately 15,000-28,000 members worldwide, while ISIS and its affiliates number roughly 12,000-18,000. It assesses that much of the growth of both networks during the past five years has occurred in African conflicts, while ISIS-Khorasan, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and ISIS elements in Syria remain among the branches most capable of supporting external plotting.
Today, terrorism exists alongside proxy warfare, ideologically motivated militias, cyber networks, organised criminal structures, radicalised individuals, digital extremist communities and state-supported armed organisations. These actors are not identical. They do not share the same ideology, the same political objectives or the same legal status. Treating them as one undifferentiated category would be analytically weak.
What increasingly connects them, however, is the use of violence, fear and coercion to create new political realities and force everyone else to live within them.
This is one of the defining features of modern terrorism and asymmetric conflict.
The objective is not always to defeat a state conventionally. It may be to intimidate civilian populations, disrupt international shipping, threaten energy infrastructure, force airlines to change routes, create insecurity around borders, destabilise governments, manipulate sectarian or religious divisions, or persuade investors that a region is too dangerous for long-term economic activity.
The maritime domain shows how quickly coercion can acquire strategic effect. The International Maritime Organization had confirmed 61 incidents affecting merchant and commercial shipping in the Red Sea from 10 January 2024 through September 2026, in addition to 17 reported incidents between November 2023 and 9 January 2024. These attacks demonstrate how an armed non-state actor can impose costs on shipping, insurance, routing, crew safety and international trade far beyond the territory from which it operates.
Over time, the danger is that the international community begins to adapt.
Shipping routes change. Investment decisions change. Military deployments change. Civilian behaviour changes. Diplomatic positions shift.
Eventually, instability created through violence risks becoming treated as the new normal.
“Free societies cannot continuously be expected to adapt to realities manufactured by terrorist organisations, ideological extremists and coercive armed networks. Those who employ such methods must instead confront the reality of resilient states, credible deterrence and alliances capable of acting.”
Iran provides an important example of how contemporary asymmetric power operates. Iran is a major country with an ancient civilisation, a large population and legitimate national interests. Iranian society itself should never be confused with the actions of its political and security institutions.
Yet the regional architecture built around Iranian power cannot be ignored.
Over decades, Tehran developed relationships with Hezbollah in Lebanon, armed groups in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, Palestinian organisations and other networks across the Middle East. These relationships differ significantly. Some organisations exercise substantial autonomy, while others depend more heavily upon Iranian financing, training, weapons or political support.
Nevertheless, the broader model demonstrates how missiles, drones, armed proxies, terrorism, political influence, cyber capabilities and information operations can be combined to project power without relying exclusively on conventional military forces.
The political and legal environment has also shifted. On 19 February 2026, the Council of the European Union formally added Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to the EU terrorist list. The designation does not make every Iran-aligned organisation legally or organisationally identical, but it is an important indicator of how European institutions now assess the intersection of state structures, terrorism and regional coercion.
This creates a difficult deterrence problem.
A state can benefit strategically from the actions of armed partners while attempting to preserve political distance from particular operations. Responsibility becomes blurred. Attribution becomes politically contested. The line between state action and non-state violence becomes deliberately difficult to define.
For democratic states, this cannot become an excuse for permanent strategic paralysis.
Diplomacy must remain possible. Negotiated solutions are necessary if the Middle East is ever to escape repeated cycles of violence. But diplomacy cannot become the process through which peaceful states are repeatedly asked to accommodate the consequences of coercion.
Negotiation is useful when it reduces violence. It becomes dangerous when violence becomes the mechanism through which actors improve their negotiating position.
At the same time, terrorism itself has entered the technological age.
Artificial intelligence, commercially available drones, autonomous systems, encrypted communications, cyber tools, satellite imagery, cryptocurrencies and advanced data analysis have reduced the technological distance between state and non-state actors.
A capability that once required an intelligence service or advanced military organisation can now, in some cases, be acquired commercially or improvised at comparatively low cost.
Drones can conduct surveillance or carry explosives. Commercial satellite imagery can provide detailed information about infrastructure. Artificial intelligence can assist translation, propaganda production, information analysis and targeting. Synthetic video and audio can manufacture events that never occurred. Encrypted networks can connect individuals across continents without physical meetings.
This does not mean that terrorists have become technologically equivalent to advanced states. They have not.
It means that technology is lowering the threshold for strategic disruption.
The security advantage will increasingly belong not simply to the actor possessing the most advanced technology, but to the one capable of adapting most rapidly to technological change.
Information has therefore become another operational battlefield.
Modern conflict is no longer fought only over territory, infrastructure or military capability. It is fought over perception.
Disinformation, manipulated imagery, deepfakes, coordinated online networks and psychological operations can shape political realities before governments are able to challenge them effectively.
An adversary does not necessarily have to destroy national infrastructure if it can persuade the public that the infrastructure is vulnerable. It does not necessarily need to defeat an army if it can divide the society supporting it. And it does not necessarily have to overthrow democratic institutions if it can steadily destroy confidence in them.
For that reason, information resilience must become a central component of national security.
The battle against terrorism must also confront the ideological and social environment in which extremist narratives flourish.
Antisemitism must be confronted unequivocally. European history alone demonstrates the consequences of allowing antisemitic conspiracy, dehumanisation and hatred to migrate from the political margins into acceptable public discourse.
Open-source data illustrate the scale of the problem. The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights reported in January 2026 that 96% of Jewish respondents in its latest EU survey had experienced at least one form of antisemitism in the year before the survey. In the United States, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 6,274 antisemitic incidents in 2025 – an average of 17 per day – including 203 violent assaults. The methodologies are different and the figures should not be directly compared, but both point to a persistent security and societal challenge.
Jewish communities should never again be expected to alter their lives because societies are unwilling to confront those threatening them.
The same determination must apply to Christian communities subjected to persecution, displacement, violence and attacks against places of worship.
Religious freedom cannot remain merely a principle expressed in declarations. It must involve the actual protection of communities when they are threatened.
At the same time, moderate Muslims who reject fanaticism and the politicisation of religion through violence must be treated as indispensable partners.
Muslim communities themselves have suffered extensively from ISIS, al-Qaeda and similar extremist movements. Sunni and Shi’a populations alike have been murdered, displaced and terrorised by organisations claiming religious justification for political violence.
Supporting moderate voices is therefore not simply a matter of social tolerance. It is part of a credible counter-extremism strategy.
There can be no hierarchy of acceptable hatred. Antisemitism must be rejected. The persecution of Christians must be rejected. Indiscriminate hostility toward Muslims must be rejected. And extremist actors attempting to transform religious identity into a justification for violence must be confronted.
There is, however, another lesson that must receive far greater attention in the next phase of counterterrorism.
“We must protect those who stood against terror.”
The defeat of ISIS’s territorial project was not achieved through Western airpower alone. Local forces fought on the ground, absorbed casualties, defended communities and provided the intelligence without which external military power would have been far less effective.
Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria played an important role in this struggle. Local Arab communities, tribal formations and other regional forces also resisted ISIS, denied extremists freedom of movement and helped stabilise territory after battles ended.
This contribution should not disappear from strategic memory.
Recognising that contribution does not mean endorsing every Kurdish organisation, every territorial objective or every political programme associated with Kurdish movements.
It means accepting a more fundamental principle: a credible security architecture cannot treat partners as indispensable while they are fighting and irrelevant once the immediate threat has diminished.
Credibility is itself part of deterrence. Potential partners observe how previous partners are treated. If communities conclude that cooperation with international coalitions will eventually leave them exposed to the very actors they helped defeat, future cooperation will become more difficult.
The Yazidi experience makes this responsibility even clearer.
ISIS attempted to destroy the Yazidi community through murder, forced displacement, abduction and sexual enslavement. Protecting such communities cannot end when territorial battles are over.
The consequences remain present rather than historical. In August 2025, the United Nations in Iraq reported that more than 200,000 Yazidis were still displaced and approximately 2,600 remained missing. These figures, more than a decade after the 2014 assault on Sinjar, show why protection must be understood as a long-term security commitment rather than a temporary humanitarian response.
Protection means security. It means justice. It means reconstruction. It means creating conditions for safe and voluntary return. And it means ensuring that those who survived one extremist movement are not later abandoned to another militia, another armed organisation or another cycle of coercion.
The same principle applies to local tribes and communities throughout Iraq, Syria and other conflict environments.
Terrorist organisations understand the importance of local structures. They exploit grievances, poverty, exclusion, political rivalry and fear. They survive where governance disappears. They recruit where trust collapses. And they return when security vacuums reopen.
Future counterterrorism strategies must therefore connect military success with local political inclusion, economic recovery, intelligence cooperation and institutional capacity.
The objective cannot be permanent dependence upon outside powers. It should be the opposite. Communities that rejected terrorism should gradually acquire the security and political strength necessary to prevent extremists from determining their future again.
For Greece and Cyprus, these developments are not distant.
Our geography places us at the intersection of Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean and the wider Middle East. Developments in Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, the Gulf and the Red Sea increasingly affect European maritime routes, energy security, migration patterns, critical infrastructure and regional stability.
Greece and Cyprus cannot therefore afford to behave merely as observers. They must increasingly think and act as contributors to regional security.
This requires a mature understanding of patriotism.
Patriotism does not mean strategic isolation. It means defending sovereignty, national interests and social resilience while building relationships that multiply national strength.
For Greece and Cyprus, deeper cooperation with the United States and Israel should form part of that approach. At the same time, relationships with Gulf and Arab states that seek stability, economic development, moderation and practical solutions should become more substantive.
This should not become a rigid ideological bloc. The objective should be an architecture of common interests.
Counterterrorism, intelligence cooperation, maritime security, cyber defence, counter-drone capability, critical infrastructure protection, artificial intelligence, defence innovation, energy security and emergency response all offer practical foundations for cooperation.
Greece brings military capability, maritime infrastructure, NATO membership, European Union participation, shipping expertise and an important geographic position connecting Europe to the Eastern Mediterranean.
Cyprus occupies an equally significant strategic location and can continue developing as a platform for humanitarian operations, security cooperation, diplomacy, technological partnerships and regional dialogue.
But geography alone creates no strategic advantage. It has to be used.
“It is therefore high time for Greece and Cyprus to participate more deeply and take action.”
That means stronger intelligence cooperation with trusted partners. It means more substantial counterterrorism coordination. It means investment in cyber defence, counter-drone capabilities and surveillance. It means stronger protection of ports, airports, energy systems and subsea infrastructure. It means deeper technological cooperation with the United States and Israel. It means more systematic engagement with constructive Gulf partners. And it means a diplomatic commitment to those communities and political forces that continue to reject terrorism, fanaticism and extremism.
This is not interventionism. It is strategic responsibility.
Modern terrorism is increasingly dispersed, technologically empowered and connected to wider forms of hybrid coercion. It exploits social fragmentation, state weakness, abandoned communities and political hesitation.
The answer cannot therefore be purely military. It must combine intelligence, technology, diplomacy, social resilience, local partnerships and credible deterrence.
We must strengthen moderate communities. We must protect those who stood against terror. We must confront antisemitism and religious persecution. We must ensure that diplomacy reduces coercion rather than rewards it. And Greece and Cyprus must recognise that geographic importance also creates responsibility.
For too long, international strategy has often focused on adapting to the latest manifestation of terrorism. The next phase must be different.
The objective should be to create a security environment in which terrorists, extremists and coercive armed networks are forced to adapt to the strength and resilience of organised states.
For Greece and Cyprus, presence is no longer enough. Participation without capability is not enough either.
The time has come for deeper cooperation, stronger deterrence and the political willingness to act.
“We should strengthen those who choose coexistence, protect those who stood against terror, and ensure that violence and coercion no longer dictate the political realities of our region.”
REFERENCES
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