US President Barack Obama has said Donald Trump’s approach to dealing with the Islamic State could end up “backfiring” and playing into the hands of the terrorist group.
Advertisement
At a news briefing in the Pentagon on Thursday, US President Barack Obama addressed a wide range of security topics, including the fight against the Islamic State (IS) group, Russia’s involvement in Syria and $400m shipped to Iran after the nuclear deal.
Obama said he was confident that ISIS would continue to lose territory as Iraqi and Syrian forces, backed by American air power, close in on Mosul, Raqqa and strongholds near the Turkish border.
“We’re going to keep going after ISIL aggressively across every front of this campaign”, Obama said at a news conference at the Pentagon, using an acronym for Islamic State.
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Islamic State group will probably continue to be a threat to the USA even after it is ousted from key strongholds in Iraq and Syria, President Barack Obama said Thursday, warning that lone-wolf believers will still be inspired to launch attacks that are harder to detect and prevent.
According to Obama, unlike al-Qaeda, which had a much more centralized operation and tried to plan very elaborate attacks, the IS opted to inspire lone-wolf attackers whose less complicated attacks were harder to detect and prevent.
He is accusing Russian Federation of failing to take the necessary steps to do that, though, adding that deteriorating conditions make it imperative for Russian Federation to show it is serious. “If you look at the 1970’s, or the 1980’s, or the 1990’s, there was some terrorist activity somewhere in the world that was brutal”, Obama said. The ideology emanates from the Middle East and appeals to a very small proportion of Muslims, he said, but the ideology “has been turbocharged over the internet, and combating that will take time as old orders collapse and new ones are born”. Trump’s campaign released a statement Thursday night accusing the administration of a “cover-up” and slamming “Obama’s refusal to acknowledge that these funds will end up being used to subsidize terror”.
While Obama has recently shown great relish for attacking Trump, at last week’s Democratic convention and elsewhere, as a demagogue, he told reporters at the Pentagon that continuing the criticism would belabor the point. But he said the options were limited, and the US had to continue to try. “If they want to be president, they have to start acting like a president”.
The president, however, said he remained skeptical of Russia’s motives.
Though the briefings don’t go into sources or methods of collecting intelligence, as they are considered extremely sensitive, they will offer a broad look at the threats and challenges facing United States national security.
The strikes came at the request of Libya’s Western-backed unity government as its forces battled to reclaim the Mediterranean coastal city, which became an important Islamic State stronghold after militants seized it a year ago.
And he further took issue with a recent report concerning a cash payment to Iran as American hostages in the country were freed in January, saying it is an attempt at the “manufacturing of outrage”.
“The depravity of the Syrian regime has rightly earned the condemnation of the world”, Obama said at the Pentagon, after a briefing about United States efforts against Daesh in the region.
Advertisement
Even as coalition planes target ISIS areas in Iraq and Syria, the Russians have simultaneously been bombing in Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad.
