ABSTRACT
On June 29, 2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was declared the caliph by his group, the Islamic State. With this declaration, the group claimed 1.5 billion Muslims were now under his authority and nation states in which they resided were void. In that moment the Islamic State went from a resistant militant movement fighting a foreign invader to that of a conquering force, using foreign fighters to aid in its own conquest of the Arab world. The regional powers discussed in this chapter will include Saudi Araba, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Israel, and Jordan. Those selected share a border with the affected area or tend to be the policy makers for the region. Each regional power has reacted to IS in their own way and each has been affected differently. With the exception of Israel, these countries can be grouped together by the Muslim denomination, Sunni or Shiite, which dominates the political structure of each country. The Sunni-dominated countries include Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt. The Shiite countries are Iran and Turkey.
