In 2014, when Business Insider's Military & Defense team got together to guess the state of the world a year down the line, we thought we were embarking on a slightly embarrassing endeavor.
It turns out several of our predictions were correct.
ISIS proved it could strike beyond its "caliphate" by bombing a Russian passenger jet and carrying out multiple attacks inside a European capital as well as inspiring several "lone wolf" attacks.
Meanwhile, Iran signed a landmark nuclear deal in July that has the potential to reshape the Middle East and the larger issue of global nuclear-arms control.
Here are 15 big geopolitical events that we think are in store for 2016.
SEE ALSO: 12 big geopolitical events we think will happen in 2015
Iran will mildly cheat on the nuclear deal.
Iran spent the second half of 2015 pushing the limits of the landmark July nuclear agreement it reached with a US-led group of countries.
Since the deal, Iran has conducted multiple illegal tests of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, arrested and imprisoned US citizens, and failed to fully cooperate with an international probe into its past nuclear-weapons program.
Because of that, the Obama administration announced its plans to issue new sanctions that will target nearly a dozen companies and individuals in Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Hong Kong for their suspected role in helping develop Iran's missile program and supporting human-rights abuses and international terrorism.
As tensions mount, expect Tehran to continue to push limits by running uranium through an advanced centrifuge (as it did in late 2014 in apparent violation of the 2013 interim nuclear agreement) and by stalling to reduce its uranium stockpiles to the agreement-mandated 300 kilograms.
At this point, Iran will cheat around the deal's margins in 2016 — and for the international community do little to counter them.
Syria will get much worse.
The ongoing US-backed push for a political resolution in Syria will fail for the simple reason that various combatants don't seem to want a peaceful resolution at this point in the war.
In the coming year, the US' triangulation on whether Bashar al-Assad should stay as the result of a peace negotiation will backfire, alienating the more hardline groups in the Syrian opposition that actually present the greatest threat to the Assad regime's survival.
The failure to reach a shared negotiating platform on terms that the Assad regime will also accept will not just nix the latest round of peace talks. It will also give Assad and his backers an excuse to sit out any future peace push (unless the regime appears to be in imminent danger of collapse).
There are plenty of other reasons to be pessimistic about Syria in the coming year. Russia has expanded its military operation aimed at defending the Assad regime.
The Israeli bombing in Syria that killed child-murdering Hezbollah terrorist Samir Kuntar on December 20 risks an escalation between Israel and the Iranian proxy group. Turkey is mired in a dangerous entanglement of interests along its border with Syria, too.
Few if any of the problems surrounding the Syria war will be solved in 2016, and the world's most destructive conflict will enter its sixth year in early 2017 with no end in sight.
Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman will not be captured.
Despite the intensifying hunt for fugitive Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán, who escaped from Altiplano prison using a sophisticated custom-built labyrinth in July, authorities will not capture Guzmán alive.
David Shirk, a University of San Diego professor who leads USD’s Justice in Mexico project, provided Business Insider with some insight on the suspicions of why this is the case: "People think that somehow there's been a pact or a negotiation between the [President Enrique] Peña Nieto administration and certain cartel organizations," Shirk said.
And that's not a difficult conclusion to reach as more Mexican officials are charged for their suspected roles in Guzmán's escape.
Amid these charges, Mexico's interior ministry has been accused of hiding a video with sounds of power tools and digging, proving that Guzmán's planned escape was a dead giveaway to prison guards.
"The video exists and is crucial in identifying the level of complicity in [El] Chapo's escape," Sen. Alejandro Encinas, the secretary of the Mexican Congress' Bicameral Committee on National Security,told EFE Agencia.
Furthermore, Guzmán has proven he can elude capture, as he did in early October when Mexican Marines chased him off a small cliff and Guzmán still got away after breaking his leg.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider