For a while, they succeeded. But ISIS made two critical mistakes, turning itself into the West’s main enemy. The first mistake was the Yazidi massacre. The shocking reports about it landed on the United Nations Security Council’s desk, sparking a major row. The second mistake was, and still is, the public beheading. What the murder of 200,000 people by the Syrian army failed to do was done by “Jihadi John” and his knife. The West launched a military intervention.

It is the fact that Daesh is organized in regular forces, more or less, which makes it very vulnerable in a frontal confrontation with the American military power. The data presented by the American intelligence last week prove it: 2,000 airstrikes; retaking 7,000 square kilometers, about one-fifth of the populated area controlled by Daesh, including the heroic Kurdish battle over Kobani with the aerial assistance of the world’s countries, which cost Daesh 1,000 jihadists; depriving Daesh of the use of at least 200 gas and oil facilities it had controlled; seriously disrupting the organization’s command and control channels; killing half of the senior command; and hunting the organization’s finances and seizing some of them.

These figures shouldn’t surprise us. We are talking, after all, about a gang of vagabonds with limited military skills, whose ability to activate sophisticated arms or a weapon of mass destruction, even if they get hold of it, is slim to null. Daesh is much bigger than its ability – in controlling resources, in attempting to manage manpower, in holding on to a very large territory.

It is my assessment that within quite a short period of time, Daesh will disintegrate into smaller groups, which will also be dangerous but will not constitute a threat to world peace.