Pentagon warns that Isis has global aspirations as US continues Iraq strikes

US effort to build international coalition against Isis advanced, as UK and six other nations agreed to arm the Kurdish peshmerga

The Guardian

Spencer Ackerman in New York

The Pentagon warned on Tuesday that Islamic State (Isis) militants have global aspirations, ratcheting up already dire US rhetoric against the jihadist army that has overrun much of Iraq and Syria.

“Quite frankly, we’re not turning a blind eye to their global aspirations as well,” said Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary.

Isis has not conducted attacks outside of Iraq – its gestation ground – and Syria, where its successes brought it global attention. Its own rhetoric imagines a global Islamic caliphate, obliterating man-made borders, but its capabilities – which include access to oil wealth – fall significantly short.

Yet Isis’s attraction of as many as thousands of western passport holders has convinced US intelligence that Isis fighters will plot attacks against the US and Europe.

“Much has been made about the threat they pose, and how imminent it is, and you don’t need to look any further than the recruitment of foreign fighters and the degree to which not just the United States government but many western governments are concerned about these foreign fighters leaving their shores, going over there, getting radicalized, trained, and then coming back and executing attacks, which is not out of the realm of the possible,” Kirby told reporters.

US warplanes continued to strike Isis targets on Tuesday. US Central Command said that its planes, supporting Kurdish and Iraqi forces, destroyed two Isis armed vehicles near the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Irbil and damaged a third.

America’s own effort to build an international coalition against Isis advanced on Tuesday as well, as Britain and six other nations agreed to provide the Kurdish peshmerga militia with small arms, ammunition and other supplies.

As Nato’s secretary general also indicated an openness of the transatlantic alliance to take military action against Isis, US defense secretary Chuck Hagel hailed the UK, France, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Italy and Albania for arming the Kurdish peshmerga, and said he expected other nations to contribute.

“The determination of the Iraqi people and the international community to counter the threat posed by [Isis] is only growing,” Hagel said on Tuesday.

Hagel, joined by General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff who has long been skeptical of US intervention in Syria’s civil war, on Thursday described Isis in apocalyptic terms. The two Pentagon leaders called Isis an “imminent threat to every interest we have” and said defeating the group would likely require strikes into Syria.

Yet neither has endorsed taking such action, and Dempsey has since drawn a line short of saying Isis threatens the US homeland, a step he considers necessary for expanding what has thus far been a limited, if inchoate, war.

One of the reasons Dempsey has cited for his wariness is the threat Syria’s air defenses could pose to US pilots. Kirby said Tuesday the Pentagon’s assessment of their robustness has not changed.

In contrast to Dempsey’s reluctance, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Nato secretary-general, said that the alliance would be willing to consider a request from the Iraqi government to get involved.

“Nato has a partnership with Iraq and if there is a request for further enhancement of that partnership, I think Nato allies would consider such a request constructively,” Rasmussen told the BBC on Tuesday.

A Nato spokeswoman, Oana Lungescu, said that any alliance involvement remained hypothetical, as Iraq has not requested Nato’s help. She noted that Nato members “can of course raise any issues they see fit” at the alliance’s summit in Cardiff next week.

Kirby would not address reported US surveillance flights over Syria. But he emphatically denied any cooperation with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, against whom the US nearly went to war last year.

“We are not coordinating with the Assad regime on the operations that we’re conducting in Iraq or any efforts to combat [Isis],” Kirby said.