John Brennan will tell Congress on Thursday that ISIS is training militants and trying to send them to the West to make up for its recent losses in Syria and Iraq.
US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John Brennan
He will tell US lawmakers that ISIS is turning to guerrilla-style tactics to compensate for its territorial losses in the Middle Eastern countries, US media reports said Wednesday.
Last month, US Army Major General Gary Volesky said ISIS was struggling to refill its ranks in Iraq.
The terrorists’ "ability to conduct large-scale offensive operations has primarily stopped," Volesky told Pentagon reporters in a video call.
The general added that ISIS was "losing terrain every single day."
The Takfiri terrorist group has also been losing ground in Syria, where it is now resorting to more desperate means of carrying out terror attacks.
In remarks prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee, the CIA chief will say ISIS has been working to build an apparatus to direct and inspire attacks against its foreign enemies.
"ISIS has a large cadre of Western fighters who could potentially serve as operatives for attacks in the West," Brennan will say.
"The group appears to be a long way from realizing the vision that [its leader] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi laid out when he declared the caliphate two years ago in Mosul."
"Unfortunately, despite all our progress against ISIS on the battlefield and in the financial realm, our efforts have not reduced the group's terrorism capability and global reach," he is expected to add. "In fact, as the pressure mounts on ISIS, we judge that it will intensify its global terror campaign to maintain its dominance of the global terrorism agenda."
ISIS terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, are engaged in crimes against humanity in the areas under their control, Press TV reported.
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