USA: 50 000 IS-terrorister har dödats på två år

In response to rapid territorial gains made by the ISIS, militants during the first half of 2014, and the group's internationally condemned brutality, reported human rights abuses and the fear of further spillovers of the Syrian Civil War, many states began to intervene against ISIL in Syria and Iraq. Later, there were also minor interventions by some states against ISIL-affiliated groups in Nigeria and Libya. In mid-June 2014, Iran, according to American and British information, started flying drones over Iraq, and, according to Reuters, Iranian soldiers were in Iraq fighting ISIL. Simultaneously, the United States ordered a small number of troops to Iraq and started flying manned aircraft over Iraq. In July 2014, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Iran sent Sukhoi Su-25 aircraft to Iraq, and Hezbollah purportedly sent trainers and advisers to Iraq to monitor ISIL's movements. In August 2014, the US and Iran separately began a campaign of airstrikes on ISIL targets in Iraq. Since then, fourteen countries in a US-led coalition have also executed airstrikes on ISIL in Iraq and in Syria. Since the airstrikes have started, ISIL has been losing ground in both Iraq and Syria. The US has taken out hundreds of ISIL fighters and their top leadership. The US has also targeted their oilfields and funding in what they have named Operation Tidal Wave II. In September 2015, Russian forces, at the request of the Syrian government, began hundreds of bombing raids against Syrian rebel groups, including ISIL (and the FSA). Even though Russia has claimed that hundreds of cities, towns and villages in Syria were liberated from ISIS control since their intervention, there have also been multiple accounts of civilian deaths from Russian airstrikes, as from the coalition led by the United States. In mid-2016, US-led coalition and Russian-led planning coordinated.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, IPA /ˈaɪsᵻl/), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, /ˈaɪsᵻs/), Islamic State (IS), and by its Arabic language acronym Daesh (Arabic: داعش‎‎ dāʿish, IPA: [ˈdaːʕɪʃ]), is a Salafi jihadist unrecognised state and militant group that follows a fundamentalist, Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam. Its adoption of the name Islamic State and its idea of a caliphate have been widely criticised, with the United Nations, various governments, and mainstream Muslim groups rejecting its statehood. This group has been designated a terrorist organisation by the United Nations and many individual countries. ISIL is widely known for its videos of beheadings of both soldiers and civilians, including journalists and aid workers, and its destruction of cultural heritage sites. The United Nations holds ISIL responsible for human rights abuses and war crimes, and Amnesty International has charged the group with ethnic cleansing on a "historic scale" in northern Iraq. ISIL originated as Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad in 1999, which pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda and participated in the Iraqi insurgency following the 2003 invasion of Iraq by Western forces. The group first proclaimed itself a worldwide caliphate and began referring to itself as Islamic State (الدولة الإسلامية ad-Dawlah al-Islāmiyah) or IS in June 2014. As a caliphate, it claims religious, political and military authority over all Muslims worldwide. ISIL gained prominence in early 2014 when it drove Iraqi government forces out of key cities in its Western Iraq offensive, followed by its capture of Mosul and the Sinjar massacre. In Syria, the group has conducted ground attacks on both government forces and opposition factions. By December 2015, the Islamic State ranged over vast landlocked territory in western Iraq and eastern Syria, with a population estimate ranging between 2.8 million and 8 million people, where it enforces its interpretation of sharia law. ISIL is now believed to be operational in 18 countries across the world, including Afghanistan and Pakistan, with "aspiring branches" in Mali, Egypt, Somalia, Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines.