Admitting that the militant Islamic State still remains a major threat despite considerable progress made by the United States and coalition forces, President Barack Obama has vowed to keep going after the group aggressively across every front, including its ability to launch inspired lone-wolf attacks.
“It is so important for us to keep our eye on the ball and not panic, not succumb to fear,” he said, even while conceding that ISIS, despite losing territory in Syria and Iraq, still has the ability to direct and inspire attacks by lone actors or small cells of terrorists as has been seen in several Asian and European countries.
“That’s why, as we discuss today, were going to keep going after ISIl aggressively across every front of this campaign,” he told reporters after a meeting at the Pentagon with his National Security Council team, expressing his confidence that the group will “inevitably” be defeated.
Obama, however, indicated that it is going to be protracted, grinding operation during which it will be important for the US and its NATO partners not to defeat themselves by making bad decisions. “We cannot frame this as a clash of civilizations between the West and Islam. That plays exactly into the hands of ISIl and the perversions -- the perverse interpretations of Islam that they’re putting forward,” he said.
He spoke of the group’s internal messages to followers that they may lose their strongholds of Mosul and Raqqa, adding: “We’ll keep hitting them and pushing them back and driving them out until they do.”
“Our air campaign continues to hammer ISIl targets. More than 14,000 strikes so far,” he said and listed the group’s top casualties including its Minister of War Umar al-Shishani, Deputy Minister of War Basim Muhammad al-Bajari and top commander in Mosul Hatim Talib al-Hamdani. “None of ISIl’s leaders are safe -- and we are going to keep going after them,” he said.
In respect of Afghanistan, Obama explained that one of the reasons for his decision to largely maintain the current US force posture was aimed at eliminating ISIS’ presence there. last month, the US forces took out Umar Khalifa, top leader of the group in Afghanistan.
Dealing with the latest controversy over payment of $400 million in hard cash to Iran in January just as Tehran released four American prisoners, Obama rejected outright the Republican accusations that it was a ransom payment.
He said there was nothing secret or nefarious about the payment, adding it was all announced in January and explained that the payment was part of a settlement reached after Iran had pressed a claim before an international tribunal to recover their money which had been frozen by the US.
“We do not pay ransom for hostages. We’ve got a number of Americans being held all around the world,” he said, recalling how he holds heartbreaking meetings with their families. “But those families know that we have a policy that we don’t pay ransom,” he said.
And the reason that the US had to give cash instead of a cheque was “precisely because we are so strict in maintaining sanctions and we do not have a banking relationship with Iran”, Obama said.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has been raising the issue prominently at his campaign meetings. A statement put out by the Trump Campaign on Thursday after Obama’s news conference alleged that the US Government was engaged in a “cover-up”.