Obama: US to expand is airstrikes

President Barack Obama has moved to deepen the US military role in the volatile Middle East, vowing to wage an unrelenting counter-terrorism effort that will rely on air strikes to target Islamic State (IS) fighters in both Iraq and Syria.

In a major reversal, Mr Obama is to outline his strategy, which also includes training and arming Syrian rebels, in a high-stakes address to the nation.

In excerpts released in advance by the White House, Mr Obama said the objective is to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the IS group.

“This counter-terrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out Isil (IS) wherever they exist using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground,” Mr Obama said.

Until now, the US launched air strikes against the group only within the borders of Iraq, whose government invited the American military to take that step.

But officials have said in recent days that the IS, which also controls territory in Syria, must be viewed as one group, not two separate entities split by a border.

Ahead of Mr Obama’s remarks, congressional leaders grappled with whether to support his request to arm the Syrian opposition and if so, how to get such a measure through the fractured legislature.

The US president’s plans amount to a striking shift for a president who has steadfastly sought to wind down American military campaigns in the Middle East and avoid new wars.

That stance has been notable in Syria, where IS militants have taken advantage of the instability created by a three-year civil war and now operate freely in areas near and across the Iraqi border.

“I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Mr Obama said. “It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.”

Closer to home, US officials fear that Westerners who have joined the militant group could return to their own countries and launch attacks.

But officials said they were not aware of a credible threat of a potential attack in the United States by the IS group.

Separately, the White House announced that it is providing $25m in immediate military assistance to the Iraqi government as part of efforts to combat the IS.

Adamantly opposed to putting American combat troops on the ground, Mr Obama will call for increased training of Iraqi security forces and the provision of arms shipments to vetted Syrian opposition fighters in order to help both groups in their fight against the militants.

Some of Mr Obama’s own advisers, including former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, pressed him to arm the rebels early in their fight against Syrian president Bashar Assad.

But the president resisted, arguing that there was too much uncertainty about the composition of the rebel forces. He also expressed concern about adding more firepower to an already bloody civil war.

Mr Obama eventually approved a small CIA-run programme to arm the rebels, but the effort he now seeks is broader and would be run by the Pentagon in countries near Syria’s borders. Mr Obama asked Congress for approval of such a programme earlier this year, but the plan stalled on Capitol Hill.

In the hours before the president’s remarks, the US Treasury Department said that Mr Obama’s strategy would include stepped-up efforts to undermine the IS group’s finances.

David Cohen, the treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, wrote in a blog post that the US would be working with other countries, especially Gulf states, to cut off the group’s external funding networks and its access to the global financial system.