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During the Iraq War, policy and academia anticipated that the war would render an upsurge of jihadist terrorism in the European context. Nearly two decades after its commencement, the forecast remains rather unexplored; meanwhile, jihadist terrorism has become the greatest threat to the European Union. As local armed conflicts typically serve as the starting point for international terrorism by creating spillover effects, this thesis tests Petter Nesser’s (2006) analytical framework that intends to measure motivational influences and spillover effects from the Iraq War on jihadist terrorism in Europe. By adopting an explorative case study examining the most lethal jihadist terrorist attack in Europe post the Iraq War, the November 2015 Paris attack, this thesis explores the fruitfulness of Nesser’s theoretical construct. The analysis indicates that the attackers’ motivational influences included a diversity of grievances, adhering to the domestic French and Belgian context, and French participation in airstrikes on Islamic State (IS) targets in Syria at the time. These grievances were further deepened by the IS’s ideology and the group’s aspiration to launch global jihad as an act of revenge for the coalition forces’ actions in Syria and Iraq. This thesis thus contributes to an under-examined conundrum concerning the upsurge of jihadist terrorism and the Iraq War while exploring other possible motivational influences. In closing, this thesis suggests future research focusing on conflicts of more contemporary character rendering motivational influences for jihadist terrorism in Europe, as the Iraq War was not recognized as a motivational influence in this case. Hence, pursuing Nesser’s theoretical construct is recommended, however, with modifications.