The Islamic State extremist group has stepped up its attacks around the world in an attempt to divert attention from its losses and recruit jihadis during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The attacks in recent weeks include attacks in the West, the Philippines and in Shiite powerhouse Iran -- something the al-Qaida extremist group never risked and which, an expert on jihadi groups said, could prove particularly effective in its recruitment effort.
"They can say, 'Here is something that al-Qaida has refrained to do,'" said Assaf Moghadam, an author and analyst of extremist groups. "From their perspective, it's been a great Ramadan so far."
The Islamic State and al-Qaida, both radical Sunni groups, are competing for recruits in the global jihadi movement. But al-Qaida has never attacked Iran, because founder Osama bin Laden had put the Persian state off-limits, citing the country's role as a conduit for arms and money.
In the attack in Tehran, five Islamic State extremists battle-tested in the groups' strongholds of Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria, simultaneously targeted Iran's parliament and the shrine of late founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, killing 17 people.
This week, the militants acknowledged in their English-language magazine that losing territory has only made them work that much harder to kill.
In London, three men armed with knives plowed a rented van into pedestrians on London Bridge, then slashed their way through the evening crowd at Borough Market on June 3, killing eight people.
Islamic militants in the Philippines aligned with the Islamic State three weeks ago assaulted the southern lakeside city of Marawi, parts of which they continue to occupy, in a plot they sketched in detail on the back of a paper calendar.
And in Egypt, masked Islamic State gunmen on May 26 ambushed a bus carrying Coptic Christians to a monastery south of Cairo, killing 29 people on the eve of Ramadan. The group has singled out Egyptian Christians with ferocity, carrying out four attacks since December and warning of more to come.
But despite the ramped up attacks, a countermessage to the extremists' violence has emerged.
The month of fasting also proves a time of high television ratings in the Arab world, and the telecommunications company Zain has released a commercial that begins with footage of a man fabricating a suicide bomb. By the end, faced with bloodied victims and survivors of extremist attacks, the man stumbles and fails in his mission.
"Let's bomb delusion with the truth," a man sings. The ad has been viewed more than 6 million times on YouTube. "We will counter their attacks of hatred with songs of love," it ends.
Separately, a London-based analysis group said today that gains in Mosul by the U.S.-led coalition have chipped away at the Islamic State's chemical-weapons capabilities.
In a new report, IHS Markit said there has been a major reduction in the Islamic State's use of chemical weapons outside the northern Iraqi city, thanks to targeted killings of chemical weapons experts by the coalition.
The analysis group said it had recorded one allegation of use of chemical weapons by the group in Syria this year, as opposed to 13 allegations in the previous six months. All other recorded allegations of the Islamic State using chemical agents in 2017 have been in Iraq -- nine of them in Mosul and one in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, it said.
"The operation to isolate and recapture the Iraqi city of Mosul coincides with a massive reduction in Islamic State chemical weapons use in Syria," said Columb Strack, senior Middle East analyst at IHS Markit.
Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 06/13/2017