Did Islamic State just make a big mistake? Picture: SITE Intel Group via AP

The attacks last week that killed 132 people, along with the downing of a plane in Egypt that killed 224, have served to focus international attention on Syria and Islamic State.

In the aftermath of the attacks, journalist and Yale University lecturer Graeme Wood, who wrote a highly regarded profile on the extremist group for The Atlantic, questioned whether Islamic State could actually be “surprised by what its supporters did — and maybe not altogether pleased”.

Wood argued that an Islamic State statement claiming responsibility for the attacks gave no indication of having planned or funded it.

“We might, in the end, find that IS supporters carried out these operations semi-autonomously, with at most partial appreciation of the group’s larger strategy,” he wrote in Politico.

Wood said it was unlikely that Islamic State would emerge as victors if foreign powers launched a full assault on them in Syria and Iraq, so its supporters may have put in it a “strategically uncomfortable corner by carrying out an attack more gruesome and successful than its leaders wished”.

“We may yet find that IS’s leaders were simply fools, and that they ordered exactly this attack and were pleased with its results, even if their PR department wasn’t quite ready to capitalise on it,” Wood suggests.

“But in the meantime the possibility remains that their ability to inspire got ahead of their ability to control the results of that inspiration. Along with its loud rejoicing over Paris, IS in Syria may also be quietly worrying about what comes next.”

US-based Middle East analyst Henri Barkey has also suggested Islamic State’s strategy to attack foreign countries is doomed to fail.

“The more ISIS does Paris-like events or threatens, you’re going to see that the determination to go after them is going to increase,” the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars director told Reuters.

He said Islamic State was displaying the “bravado of a 15-year-old” but ultimately this was not very smart and its aims would be difficult to achieve. The Paris attacks had already strengthened support for US President Barack Obama to pursue Islamic State with even more determination.

But while there has already been an international backlash to the attacks that have seen growing co-operation and increased air strikes on Islamic State targets, other experts were sceptical Islamic State would be concerned about the attacks or their aftermath.

US President Barack Obama talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin as co-operation between the two countries against Islamic State becomes more likely. Picture: Kayhan Ozer/Anadolu Agency via APSource:AP

“Islamic State would be pleased with the Paris attacks and related hysteria, even though I doubt they were aware of what was being planned beforehand,” Professor Clive Williams of Macquarie University’s Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism said.

“Anything that unbalances the crusaders on their home territory is welcomed even if it means retaliatory bombing in Syria.”

He said attacks in foreign countries were aimed at undermining domestic support for continued military intervention in the Middle East. “They are not a sign of IS weakness,” Prof Williams said.

Deakin University terrorism expert Professor Greg Barton agreed, saying Islamic State appeared to be deliberately ramping up their global strategy to move beyond lone-wolf attacks and include mass casualty attacks in the style of al-Qaeda.

It may ultimately prove to be a tactical mistake. But, if an international agreement is reached to end the civil war in Syria that results in a united ground operation against them, IS may in fact be relying on the weakness of their enemies.

“Islamic State might well have miscalculated and provoked a response beyond their capacity to resist … but their calculation appears to be that an international coalition will ultimately fatigue and fail, just as occurred in Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said.