New York-based diplomacy think tank Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) published an analysis of the Moscow shooting attack over the weekend, claiming that the "Khorasan Province" of the Islamic State (ISIS-K), which has since claimed responsibility for the mass shooting, has global ambitions of furthering a self-proclaimed caliphate.
The New York Times first reported on the matter, saying that ISIS's Khorasan affiliate - based out of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran - is currently the most active cell of the terrorist group.
According to the analysis made by CFR's terrorism scholar Bruce Hoffman, ISIS-K has set its sights on attacking Europe and beyond, and they are capable of executing similar attacks.
"ISIS has staged over half-a-dozen attacks in Russia since 2016," he said in his analysis. "The movement has long deemed Russia as much of an enemy of the Muslim people as the United States."
"In taking responsibility for the March 22 attack, ISIS credibly claimed 'let crusader Russia and its allies know that the mujahideen do not forget to take revenge,'" Hoffman added.
ISIS-K's operational resilience could be credited to its adoption of a network-based system when the main group's top-down structure was toppled in Iraq and Syria in 2017. This allowed several cells of the group to become more flexible and independent of each other in the event of a targeted attack.
Previous Warnings, Attacks
Hoffman also cited US Central Command chief Gen. Michael Kurilla when he warned Congress last year that ISIS-K could execute "external operations against US or Western interests abroad in under six months with little or no warning."
National Counterterrorism Center director Christine Abizaid was also summoned to a Capitol Hill hearing in January 2023. She explained that the group was the "threat actor [she was] most concerned about."
"We see concerning indications of ISIS-Khorasan in Afghanistan and its ambition that might go beyond that immediate territory," she told lawmakers.
ISIS-K was also responsible for the double suicide bombings that killed 84 in Kerman, Iran, during ceremonies commemorating the fourth anniversary of the killing of Qassem Soleiman, a commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' Quds Force.
"As with the latest incident in Moscow, the United States had warned Iran, as had Russia, of what was believed to be an impending terrorist attack," Hoffman added.
It was previously reported that Washington warned the Kremlin of the attack under the Duty to Warn requirement, a non-binding obligation of American spy agencies to alert the intended targets if they learn of planned attacks. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed the information as "blackmail" and propaganda.
