Jordan Likely To Step Up Anti-Islamic State, Countersmuggling Operations in Syria

(Jordan Pix/Getty Images)

Jordanian Armed Forces, U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps forces and other international forces conduct a combined Arms Live Fire Exercise on May 23, 2024 in the desert near Azraq, Jordan.

The U.S. military withdrawal from Syria will likely pressure Jordan to expand security support to Syria to combat challenges including the Islamic State and arms and drug smuggling. Jordan is likely to conduct at least sporadic airstrikes when Syria is unable or unwilling to effectively mitigate threats. Over the next two months, the United States is expected to fully withdraw the roughly 1,000 troops remaining in Syria, continuing the drawdown begun in 2025. In mid-February, U.S. forces handed over operations of the al-Tanf Base near Syria's borders with Jordan and Iraq to Syrian forces. Days later, U.S. troops also transferred control of the al-Shaddadi Base in Syria's northeast. While some U.S. forces withdrew to Jordan, where the United States maintains a robust military presence at the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base (MSAB), the government in Amman remains concerned about cross-border threats from Syria. However, the outbreak of war with Iran on Feb. 28 may slow the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, especially if the conflict and Syrian border reinforcements lead to security gaps within the country.

U.S. President Donald Trump attempted to fully withdraw U.S. forces from Syria in 2019 during his first term in order to reduce the United States' long-term military presence abroad, but never followed through. Since then, U.S. force numbers in Syria have fluctuated, reaching around 2,000 at their peak after the collapse of the regime of former Syrian President Bashar al Assad in December 2024 to support counter-Islamic State efforts and protect Kurdish-held oil fields.
In November 2025, Syria joined the U.S.-led Global Coalition against the Islamic State. The United States has increasingly turned toward the interim Syrian government to combat the terror group as ties between Washington and Damascus have warmed. The United States has cut support for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which Washington previously relied on to combat the Islamic State in Syria.

Jordan has expanded security cooperation with the interim Syrian government out of concern over instability in its neighbor following the collapse of the former regime, as well as concern over cross-border drug smuggling and a resurgence of the Islamic State. The collapse of the Assad regime raised concerns in Amman that instability in Syria could spill over into Jordan, including by potentially enabling jihadist groups to pose cross-border security threats or triggering new waves of refugees into the kingdom. Since then, Jordan has prioritized security cooperation with the Syrian government, in addition to some economic cooperation. For instance, in January 2025, Syria and Jordan established a joint security committee to improve border security, combat cross-border weapons and drug smuggling — particularly of the stimulant Captagon, the trafficking of which was a major source of income for the Assad regime — and counter the Islamic State. In May, Syria, Jordan and Turkey began joint counterterrorism operations based out of Damascus to combat terrorism, particularly from the Islamic State.

In 2024, prior to the collapse of the Assad regime, Jordan hosted around 1.2 million Syrian refugees, the majority of whom fled Syria during the multiyear Syrian Civil War that broke out in 2011. According to U.N. Human Rights Council estimates, as of mid-February 2026, around 180,000 Syrians have returned to Syria from Jordan. The majority have not returned because of persistent security concerns, limited economic opportunities and a lower standard of living in their home country.
During the Assad era, the Syrian government used drug smuggling routes transiting through Jordan to supply Captagon to Gulf Arab markets as a way to generate state revenue. Additionally, the Assad regime was allied with Iran and provided key smuggling routes to supply weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon and — especially for Amman given Jordan's borders with the West Bank — Hamas fighters there. Even following the Assad regime's fall, many of these smuggling networks remain in place. However, Iran's weakening as a result of wars in June 2025 and early 2026 with Israel and the United States has limited its ability to resupply weapons to its regional allies and proxies.

A full U.S. withdrawal from Syria would increase pressure on Jordan to step up its security coordination with Damascus, likely through intelligence sharing and targeted airstrikes, but with the potential for deeper involvement if Islamic State resurges. The United States' declining military presence in Syria will increase pressure on neighboring countries, including Jordan, which are vulnerable to cross-border attacks, to increase security support for Syria. Even though the Syrian government has successfully thwarted potential Islamic State attacks and disrupted some cells, the Islamic State and Islamic State-inspired actors have successfully conducted a series of high-profile attacks within Syria, claiming responsibility on Feb. 22 for two attacks in Deir el-Zour and pledging that the jihadist group was entering a "new phase" of operations against the Syrian regime. Turkey has positioned itself as a key provider of military aid and training to the Syrian military and has sought to expand its military presence in the country to expand its regional influence and support counterterrorism efforts. Even so, the Turkish military presence remains largely focused on northern Syria and does not extend to the Jordanian border. As such, Jordan will likely prioritize strengthening border security in coordination with Syrian forces and preventing cross-border threats. Even though the Islamic State has historically been more active in northern and eastern Syria, rather than along its southern and southeastern borders with Jordan, the group was linked to a series of attacks in the kingdom during its heyday in the mid-2010s, including a June 2016 suicide car bomb attack along the Syria-Jordan border that killed six Jordanian troops. As such, Amman will likely at least initially expand its counterterrorism efforts through intelligence-sharing to support Syrian security efforts, participating in additional regional cooperative efforts against the Islamic State and conducting periodic airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria. Airstrikes will likely be conducted in conjunction with U.S. forces operating from Harir Air Base in northern Iraq and MSAB in Jordan. However, an Islamic State resurgence in Syria — especially in conjunction with a cross-border attack in Jordan or an attack in another country that results in Jordanian deaths — would likely increase Jordanian counterterrorism support and/or the frequency of airstrikes targeting the Islamic State. Amman could also conduct airstrikes independently, outside of the U.S.-led Global Coalition. While the government in Damascus may complain about unilateral Jordanian airstrikes on its soil, Syrian criticism would likely be short-lived since Jordan would not be attacking Syrian government targets and the intensity and frequency of Jordanian attacks would likely decrease over time.

In a January interview, Iraq's head of intelligence estimated that the number of Islamic State fighters in Syria had grown from around 2,000 to 10,000 in the past year.
Security gaps amid January clashes between Syrian government forces and the Kurdish-led SDF, which maintained prisons that held Islamic State fighters and their families in Syria's northeast, resulted in the escape of between 15,000 and 20,000 people, mainly Islamic State fighters' family members, according to U.S. intelligence estimates.
Jordan previously participated in U.S.-led airstrikes against Islamic State targets in late December 2025 and January, when the United States conducted a series of airstrikes in retaliation for the Palmyra attack that killed three Americans.
In February 2015, Jordan conducted a series of unilateral airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria in retaliation for the group's execution of a Jordanian pilot. The Jordanian airstrikes killed at least 56 Islamic State targets during three days of intense attacks. Afterward, Jordan continued to conduct sporadic airstrikes against Islamic State targets, but with a reduced frequency and intensity.
Although Israel has a military presence in southern Syria after occupying additional territory following the Assad regime's collapse, Israel has prioritized weakening the military power of the interim Syrian regime and supporting the Druze minority in southern Syria rather than combating the Islamic State.

Jordan will pressure Damascus to take more assertive measures to dismantle smuggling networks, but Syria's likely insufficient response means that these networks will largely remain intact and Jordan will likely conduct sporadic, opportunistic airstrikes to try to disrupt them. Jordan will likely increase its troop presence near the Syria-Jordan-Iraq border following the U.S. military withdrawal from the al-Tanf Base to prevent smugglers from exploiting the change in control. Even so, the porous 360-kilometer Syria-Jordan border will continue to provide avenues for smugglers to attempt to smuggle weapons and drugs through Jordan, with Iranian-supplied arms heading for the West Bank and much of the Captagon destined for Gulf markets. Syria will likely have some success cracking down on the few arms smuggling and drug smuggling routes that run through the Rif Dimashq and Homs governorates in the center of the country. However, Damascus is unlikely to significantly crack down on smuggling networks in the southern Sweida governorate, where the vast majority of Syria's drug production and smuggling networks are located, though they have become more fragmented following the collapse of the Assad regime. This is because an increase of Syrian forces in Sweida to counter drug trafficking networks would likely spark Israeli concern and potential military retaliation after Israel called for several provinces south of Damascus, including Sweida, to be demilitarized to protect Israeli national security interests. Though the Syrian government will likely conduct intermittent raids and interceptions of smuggling caches throughout the country, the constraints on Syrian forces to dismantle these networks in Sweida mean that these networks are likely to largely remain intact and Jordan will likely conduct sporadic, opportunistic airstrikes in southern Syria against them. Given Israeli sensitivities, Jordan would likely deconflict any airstrikes with Israel — with which Jordan maintains longstanding bilateral security cooperation. Finally, since any Jordanian strikes would likely target smuggling routes that Israel would likely secondarily benefit from, they would be unlikely to elevate bilateral tensions with Israel.

In October 2025, the Syrian minister of the interior announced that government forces had seized 12 million Captagon pills in a raid near Damascus, marking one of the largest interceptions of Captagon shipments since the interim government took power.
Although some Syrian drug smuggling routes run through the Golan Heights to Israel, Israeli forces are adept at interdicting shipments. Israeli security concerns in Syria are centered on countering potential jihadist threats, cross-border attacks and the potential for the Turkish-backed Syrian government to emerge as a larger national security threat, despite ongoing de-escalation talks. As such, Israel is unlikely to take steps to dismantle Syrian drug trafficking networks or cooperate with Jordan and/or Syria on curbing them.