According to Iraq’s security forces, the Islamic State (IS) has been dealt a major blow after an airstrike by the Iraqi air force on a meeting of IS’s top leaders in a town near the Iraq-Syria border has resulted in the deaths of eight of the Islamist terrorist group’s foremost leaders. The Iraqi claim also mentions the self-appointed caliphate’s supreme leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as being in attendance and may have been the main target. According to hospital sources, al-Baghdadi was not among the dead. Iraq says his condition is “unknown”. This is of course not the first time a report or claim of a direct attack on al-Baghdadi has made the news, some of which have declared him dead, only to be retracted later. Interestingly, however, the social media mouthpieces of IS are responding to news of this attack not with denials about the attack or confirmations of al-Baghdadi’s survival but with displays of defiant bravado, claiming that the ‘caliphate’ established by IS will outlive al-Baghdadi so the conceivable death of their leader will not impede the group’s progress or mission. The boisterousness of the reaction hints at a barely concealed insecurity, and perhaps can be read as indicative of the noose tightening around IS and its members feeling the heat. This alone makes the latest report of an attack on al-Baghdadi more plausible than the claims of the past. Regardless of whether or not al-Baghdadi survived, the fact that Iraqi forces were able to track and target him reveals that Iraq’s intelligence gathering and networking is drastically improving, allowing them to get credible tip-offs on the whereabouts of the elusive militant. And while it is possible that IS can have a post-Baghdadi life, the death of a charismatic and powerful leader of any group results in a power struggle, splinter groups and a loss of morale. The fate of IS in such an eventuality is unlikely to be any different. The improved Iraqi operations coincide with Russia’s precise and effective military operation in Syria, the other major stronghold of IS. With Iraq recently joining an alliance with Russia, Iran and Syria to target IS, it seems that IS is faced with the most concentrated pushback to date and it is hoped that its grip on large parts of both Iraq and Syria is quickly loosened. After years of dillydallying and contradictory policies of the US about targeting IS through the questionable and largely inefficient means of proxies, the certitude of this Russia-bolstered operation engenders optimism about eliminating the existential threat of an organisation as ruthless and far-reaching as IS. *