Israeli expert says West ‘underestimated’ IS risk

Europe and the global community erred and underestimated the threat by Islamic State to the West, a leading Israeli analyst tells a French paper.

Speaking to L’Express, Yoram Schweitzer, from the Institute of National Security Studies (INSS), says that greater involvement by NATO and the West is necessary in order to defeat the Sunni terror group.

Admitting that intervention on a wide scale in Iraq and Afghanistan have not given “conclusive results,” Schweitzer said IS is a “significantly higher” threat than al-Qaeda because Islamic State has an “expansionist” agenda. The organization will not restrict itself to Iraq and Syria, Schweitzer says, adding that the world has “for a long time believed, wrongly, that the [group] would limit itself to inspiring minor actions in Europe and would reserve its atrocities for the Middle East. But today the world has realized that it will apply its strategy of shock and scare tactics in the West as well.”

Schweitzer says that “at this stage,” the politics of the West “exclude the presence of boots on the ground in favor of an aerial campaign, a few military counselors and providing arms.

“The type of war in the face of IS is different from the Second World War or the Vietnam War. Sending a large number of foot soldiers would be futile,” Schweitzer says, since “it would serve ISIS propaganda that qualifies them as an occupation force.”

Israel, the analyst tells L’Express, is not a priority for Islamic State at the moment, just as the group avoids “states with strong militaries” like Iran or Turkey. The group focuses on weak countries where it can score victories, like Syria, Iraq or Libya.