The terrorist group known as ISIS may be prepping chemical and biological weapons, according to Iraqi and US intelligence reports.
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The issue brief outlines options the anti-ISIS coalition can use to defeat ISIS by increasing support to local partners in the fight, increasing coalition resources and airstrikes, improving intelligence cooperation with allies, continuing diplomatic efforts to wind down Syria’s civil war, and degrading ISIS sanctuaries and networks outside of Iraq and Syria through law enforcement, military, and diplomatic means. In those attacks, preliminary US analysis found trace amounts of sulfur mustard on the weapons. So far, global investigators have confirmed only a single of use of mustard gas by the terrorist group.
Additionally, Russian Federation has supplied Iraqi forces with 1,000 protective suits against chemical attacks, Hakim al-Zamili, the head of the Iraqi parliament’s security and defense committee, told AP.
However, a number of security experts have warned it has now set up a specialised research branch in the pursuit of more advance weapons and has managed to attract scientists from around the world. They wouldn’t give details of the program, including how many personnel it is believed to have or its budget.
Some of those working on the team once worked for Saddam Hussein’s former Military Industrialization Authority.
In an alarming move, jihadists are also said to be recruiting foreign experts to help them develop nerve gas.
However, he said it is not thought Islamic State has the ability to manufacture chemical or biological weapons outside of Iraq or Syria and we should not be “overly panicked” about the threat to targets in Europe and the UK.
Mr Valls said extremists could use chemical and biological weapons in its next attack on the streets of the country. “That would threaten not just Iraq but the whole world”.
It would not be surprising if ISIL has been able to fashion some crude chlorine-based weapons, using common, readily available materials, a US counterterrorism official told VOA. A European official privy to intelligence on the extemist group’s programs agreed, saying so far even IS production of mustard gas was in small quantities and of low quality. It split with al-Qaida over tactics and strategy after al-Zarqawi’s death, adopting a new name that translated as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.
Politicians are increasingly using the D-word for two simple reasons: to strip the group of its credibility and to steer away from the Islam-versus-the-West dynamic it apparently craves.
New intelligence suggests that the terrorist state is actively attempting to produce both, and the terrorist state has used chemical weapons before. But, he added, what was needed was “to secure a safe environment to carry out experiments”.
According to leading Islamic State expert Cole Bunzel, the group was founded in October 2006 as the Islamic State of Iraq, or Islamic State.
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A man, wounded in what the government said was a chemical weapons attack, is treated at a hospital in the Syrian city of Aleppo on March 19, 2013.
