The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) — the extremist group waging a bloody takeover of Iraq — will be a major threat to the United States by the end of next year, according to Brian Zimmer, president of the Coalition for a Secure Driver's License.

"It’s a huge threat and the threat in terms of when it's going to be realized is probably a year and a half away,'' Zimmer told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

"There may be some lone wolves in the meantime.''

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Zimmer says ISIS will become extremely dangerous once it establishes a
caliphate — an Islamic state led by a supreme religious and political leader known as a caliph — which will occur before the end of 2015.

"It's being backed by very rich people in the Middle East and other countries. Those people, although some of them are religiously motivated, many of them are getting paid cold, hard cash,'' he said.

"The result is you have a lot of young men … now they're being trained, being put into combat.

"They're helping carry out retaliatory acts against Shiites, cutting their heads off as we've seen on television or heard about. So they're going to get very hard.''

One way of strengthening the U.S. homeland against ISIS and other terrorists is to beef up the security surrounding the issuance of driver's licenses, according to Zimmer.

His nonpartisan, nonprofit crime prevention group in Washington, D.C., strives to raise public awareness that states with weak systems for issuing driver's licenses and IDs increase the risk of foreign terrorists and domestic criminals assuming new identities.

"Our organization does not oppose providing lower-tier driver's licenses to people who can't produce all the qualifications,'' he said.

"But when you aren't sure who the person is, then states should conform with federal law.''

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