About a month ago, ISIS leader Abdullah Kardash was assassinated in a raid by US special forces on his hiding place in northern Syria.
Accurate intelligence and impressive operational capability joined the further success of the Americans in their fight against ISIS.
Kardash replaced the organization's founding leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who had been assassinated by the Americans about two years earlier, not far from where he himself had been assassinated.
But like the Hydra monster in Greek mythology, ISIS also grows a new head every time its head is cut off.
Thus, Abu Hassan al-Qurayshi was appointed heir to Kardash and took over the leadership of the organization.
But it is not a question of the identity of the leader, who has in any case become a symbol lacking leadership and command and also doubtful whether he needs these, after the state that ISIS established in the previous decade ceased to exist when the Americans occupied its capital.
It is about the ideology of the organization and the right supporters to sacrifice their lives for it, and those are alive and well.
Like a fish returned to the water, ISIS seems to have returned to its natural environment in which it thrived, the desert areas of Iraq and Syria, where it enjoys support among the local population, which provides shelter to its terrorist cells.
Only in recent weeks, after its leader was assassinated, has the organization carried out a long line of terrorist attacks around the world.
In Syria, dozens of Syrian soldiers were killed and wounded in an attack on the convoy in which they were traveling near the city of Tadmor in the center of the country.
Attacks by ISIS members have also been reported in Iraq and the Sinai Peninsula.
Activists of the organization carried out an attack on a Shiite mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan, in which 63 people were killed and more than 200 were injured.
Hundreds of people were killed and injured in a series of terrorist attacks in Nigeria, Mali and Somalia.
These attacks can be underestimated and also attributed to local ISIS-sponsored terrorist operatives, but not necessarily under his direct command.
But here in Syria and Iraq, where his focus is, not a day goes by without his men attacking Assad's army and the Iraqi army.
Just earlier this year, hundreds of ISIS fighters attacked the central prison in the city of Hasqa, in the heart of the Kurdish region in eastern Syria, in an organized and well-planned operation, and released about a thousand of their comrades who had been detained there.
Such an operation demonstrates an impressive operational capability, and mainly shows that the organization has commanders and fighters capable of carrying out such attacks.
When the Americans collapsed the caliphate established by ISIS in the previous decade, they warned that the ISIS state might have collapsed, but the ideology underlying the organization's activities still exists and still enjoys support.
The dream of jihad therefore still tempts many, and apart from that - there has been no change in the reality on the ground, which has led Sunni communities across Syria and Iraq to support ISIS in its fight against Bashar al-Assad's Alawite regime and the Shiite-controlled Iraqi government.
As the attacks in Western Europe have almost ceased, although no doubt the coals are still whispering, the world has lost interest in the organization, and the Americans are also focusing their efforts on harming its leaders but not trying to fundamentally change the reality that allows the organization to continue operating.
ISIS is here to stay, and meanwhile it is warming up at the edge of the field, waiting for an opportunity to raise its head again.
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