ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—US President Barack Obama vowed on Thursday that the US will continue to “keep going after” Islamic State (ISIS) militants until they are driven out of Iraq and Syria, adding that the group is admitting great losses in both countries.
“The decline of ISIL [ISIS] in Syria and Iraq appears to be causing it to shift to tactics that we’ve seen before; an even greater emphasis on encouraging high profile terrorist attacks, including in the United States,” Obama told a press conference in the Pentagon following a two-hour National Security meeting.
“We’re going to keep going after ISIL aggressively across every front of this campaign,” he added.
In reference to a recent capture of a vast trove of ISIS documents by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Obama said the US is acquiring sufficient evidence “which we will use to keep destroying ISIL’s networks and stop foreign fighters.”
“Even ISIL’s leaders know they’re going to keep losing. In their message to followers, they’re increasingly acknowledging that they may lose Mosul and Raqqa and ISIL is right. They will lose them, and we’ll keep hitting them and pushing them back and driving them out until they do,” the President said.
Obama also admitted that he doesn’t trust the Russians in Syria, despite the fact his administration is trying to arrange an agreement to coordinate militarily with them against the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (until late last month the al-Qaeda affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra) group.
When asked why he trusted Russian President Vladimir Putin to work with in Syria Obama replied, “I am not confident that we can trust the Russians and Vladimir Putin, which is why we have to test,” them.
That “test”, Obama explained, will be to see if Russia is willing to focus its military efforts in Syria against groups like al-Sham and ISIS, as opposed to focusing its efforts on supporting the Syrian regime against a broad array of groups which oppose it.
However if Russia doesn’t do this, Obama said then it “will have shown itself very clearly to be an irresponsible actor on the world stage that is supporting a murderous regime and will have to answer to that on the international stage.”
