US President Barack Obama warns ISIS leaders ‘you are next’

In what was billed as a major public push of US strategy to defeat the Islamic State, President Obama took only a few minutes at the Pentagon on Monday to outline several recent successes but offered no new plans toward stopping the terror group’s growing, global threat.

“ISIL leaders can not hide, and our message to them is simple: you are next”, the president said.

“We are hitting them harder than ever”, said Obama, in a second address following a seemingly ISIS-influenced attack in San Bernardino that has raised questions about his strategy.

President Obama laid out details Monday on how the U.S.-led coalition is rooting ISIS out of key territory in Iraq and Syria.

Immediately following the press conference, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter is going to the Middle East to work with coalition partners on securing more support for this fight.

“All that said, we recognize that progress needs to happen faster”, he said.

Obama also emphasized that the fight on the ground must be carried out by local forces and allies in the region.

The Obama administration has said it is boosting military pressure on Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq.

Mr Obama held a meeting with his top military advisors at the Pentagon, where he said there had now been almost 9,000 air strikes and IS was being hit “harder than ever”.

“Everyday we destory as well more of ISIL’s forces…their fighting positions, bunkers and staging areas, heavy weapons, bomb making forces and training camps”.

The president has come under fire from Republicans since the November 13 Paris attacks killed 130 people and the San Bernardino shootings in early December killed 14 more.

Obama is also slated to attend a briefing at the National Counterterrorism Center later in the week. Secretary of State John Kerry will be traveling to Russian Federation as part of ongoing efforts to seek a solution for the Syrian civil war.

Since then, the US military function has steadily grown in both Iraq and Syria, as the president described in greater detail than he did in his Oval Office address to the country a week before. In the days after the series of coordinated attacks in Paris last month, Obama reassured Americans that there wasn’t a specific and credible plot against the U.S. He urged them to continue with their daily lives but remain vigilant.

“The American people are smart enough to know when something is working or not, and it’s obvious that the president’s current strategy isn’t working”, Republican House Majority leader Kevin McCarthy said in response to Obama’s Pentagon appearance.