Tristan Redman

What has been consistent is the US has gone in and tried to target anyone who is senior leadership of ISIS to continue to degrade the group. And it's that old cliche of cut off the head and the body will die. And by maintaining that, it has been extraordinarily hard for ISIS to get back to anywhere near where it was. But that leads me to my central question, which is, does ISIS remain a real threat in Syria? And if not in Syria, does it remain a real threat in some other capacity?

So if you imagine the current picture of ISIS looks something like this. It breaks down into a number of issues. There is an insurgency that has to be contained, and that's contained largely through airstrikes and targeted killings of its leadership. There are tens of thousands of prisoners from when that group had its so-called state, where there is no coherent strategy of what to do with them. And then there is the group's

I think this is the thing to think about. It's like while the so-called state is gone, there isn't a physical nation that people can go and join anymore, the group's ability to inflict harm isn't.

It causes a lot of issues on the continent of Africa. It causes issues in Afghanistan. It inspires attacks around the world. Not at the scale it once did, but that threat is still there. And I think herein lies the problem. While the caliphate is gone...

These small issues remain. But if these issues aren't dealt with, they can become a much bigger pain for the world to deal with. On that note, thank you so much for your time, Josh. You're welcome. It's lovely to be here.

Kiitos, että katsoitte.

And we here at The Global Story, we really love hearing from you all. So if you have any suggestions, ideas, questions for us, you can email us at theglobalstory at bbc.com. Today's show was produced by Sam Chantarasek and Lucy Paul. It was mixed by Travis Evans, and our senior news editor is Chyna Collins. I'm Asma Khalid, and that's it for The Global Story. Thanks as always for tuning in, and we'll talk to you again tomorrow.