Obama says US military hitting Islamic State harder than ever

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama said the United States military and allied forces are hitting the Islamic State group harder than ever and threatened the group’s leaders, after he opened a rare meeting of his National Security Council at the Pentagon on Monday.

The meeting outside the White House is part of a public relations drive to ease Americans’ worries about domestic terrorism ahead of the holidays.

Obama said the group has already lost 40% of the territory it once held. The president also said the US strategy of hunting down leaders, training forces and stopping the group’s financing and propaganda is progressing.

“ISIL leaders cannot hide and our next message to them is simple: You are next,” Obama said.

The president is making the case for his broad counterterrorism strategy, including an ongoing campaign against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

As Obama, Defense Secretary Ash Carter and the top national security team gathered, White House officials cautioned that the session didn’t signal a major change in approach.

“If there’s an opportunity for us to intensify efforts behind one aspect of our strategy, then that is something that he wants his team to be prepared to do,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

The president is also slated for a briefing at the National Counterterrorism Center later in the week.

The high-profile visits to agencies charged with keeping the US safe follow a televised address December 6 that aimed to reassure the public but that critics said failed to do the job. Obama is also hoping to draw a contrast with Donald Trump and his inflammatory remarks about Muslims, which Obama’s administration has said endangers US national security.

“Terrorists like ISIL are trying to divide us along lines of religion and background,” Obama said in his weekly address, using an acronym for the extremist group. “That’s how they stoke fear. That’s how they recruit.”

This week, he said, “we’ll move forward on all fronts.”

After a series of setbacks, the US and its coalition partners have claimed progress recently in wresting back territory from IS and eliminating some of its key leaders in Syria and Iraq. The military has said hundreds of US airstrikes in recent days dealt a major blow to IS ranks in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi, which IS seized in May.

But progress in Ramadi, as elsewhere, has been slow, leading to calls in the US and abroad for a tougher US response. Obama has authorized sending small numbers of US special forces to Iraq and Syria, but has insisted he won’t budget from his determination not to send in major US ground forces.

The American public remains jittery about the specter of extremism after deadly attacks in California and Paris. Seven in 10 Americans rate the risk of an attack in the US as at least somewhat high, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll — a sharp increase from the 5 in 10 who said that in January.

US officials have insisted there are no specific, credible threats to the United States. But the apparent lack of warning before the San Bernardino massacre has raised concerns about whether the US has a handle on potential attacks, especially during high-profile times such as the end-of-year holidays.

At the National Counterterrorism Center, which analyzes intelligence at its facility in suburban Virginia, Obama planned to address reporters Thursday after a briefing by intelligence and security agencies on threat assessments. Obama receives a similar briefing each year before the holidays.

Concerns about extremism emanating from the Middle East have taken center stage in the presidential race. Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic candidate, planned a speech in Minnesota on Tuesday to present a plan for protecting the US homeland.

Obama has tried to use his bully pulpit as a counterpoint to Trump and his widely condemned proposal to bar Muslims from entering the US. The White House scheduled a conference call Monday with religious leaders about ways to fight discrimination and promote religious tolerance.

Aiming to put a human face on the Syrian refugee issue, Obama is to speak Tuesday at the National Archives Museum, where 31 immigrants from Iraq, Ethiopia, Uganda and 23 other nations will be sworn in as US citizens. Obama planned to use that occasion to reframe the national conversation about immigrants around the country’s founding values of tolerance and freedom.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.