The intelligence officers who warned Putin have a new warning: In the next six months...

According to that American newspaper, ID-K was founded in 2015 by disgruntled members of the Pakistani Taliban, who then accepted a more violent version of Islam. The group's numbers have been halved to around 1,500 to 2,000 fighters by 2021, the New York Times reports, due to a combination of US airstrikes and attacks by Afghan commandos that have killed many of the group's leaders.

The group then received a windfall after the Taliban overthrew the Afghan government, after the chaotic withdrawal of US military forces from Afghanistan. It is also recalled that, during the withdrawal of the US military, IS-K members carried out a suicide attack on the international airport in Kabul in August 2021, in which 13 American soldiers and as many as 170 civilians were killed.

That attack "raised" ID-K to the very top of the list of threats to US security. However, the Afghan Taliban are also fiercely fighting against IS-K, who have repeatedly prevented them from occupying the territory or recruiting a large number of former Taliban fighters who were "bored" of peacetime.

US President Joseph Biden and his top commanders said earlier that the United States would carry out strikes "over the horizon" from a base in the Persian Gulf against IS rebels who threaten the United States and its interests abroad.

Indeed, Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, head of the US military's Central Command, told a House committee on Thursday that IS-K "retains the ability and willingness to attack US and Western interests abroad in as little as six months and without warning."

"The threat from ISIS remains a major concern in the fight against terrorism," said US National Intelligence Director Avril HaInes and pointed out that the largest number of global IS attacks were carried out by the IS-K group.

Counter-terrorism officials in Europe say they have foiled several IS-K plots in recent months planning various attacks. In a post on its official Telegram account in January, IS-K said it was behind a bombing that killed 84 people in Kerman, Iran, during a memorial procession for Major General Qassem Soleimani, a respected Iranian commander who was killed.

Now the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the Moscow concert hall attack, and US officials have specifically linked it to IS-K.

"ID-K has been fixated on Russia for the past two years" and often criticizes President Vladimir Putin in its propaganda, said Colin P. Clark, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a New York-based security consulting firm.

ID-K accuses the Kremlin of having Muslim blood on its hands, citing Moscow's interventions in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria. Also, it is stated that a large number of ID-K members are from Central Asia and live and work in Russia.