Defeating Daesh is not a US priority: Analyst

Defeating (Daesh) ISIL is not a US policy priority and the Obama administration has instead focused on removing the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, says an international lawyer and political commentator.

In a phone interview with Press TV on Thursday, Barry Grossman said that it is “indisputable that under Obama’s leadership the US has not aimed to defeat ISIL.”

He said Obama “has instead focused on what he likes to spin publicly as a policy of 'containment,' but which in fact clearly includes considerable efforts not just to contain but also to clandestinely encourage their forces to withdraw from Iraq and redeploy in Syria to fight the Assad government forces, ideally under a different brand.”

“Certainly, nobody who has been following events in Syria can be under any doubt that the dominant US policy position in the region is to eliminate the Assad government, while defeating ISIL, al-Qaeda, al Nusra and other such elements is not a policy priority at this point in time,” Grossman noted.

“So in that sense, Obama’s ill-timed sound bite interview with CNN was accurate enough,” Grossman said in reference to the US president’s interview with the American broadcaster during which he claimed that ISIL has been successfully contained by the US military.”  But Mr Grossman disputed US claims that Daesh’s relative lack of progress is attributable to efforts made by the US led coalition.

He observed that “Obama is now focused on safeguarding his... legacy and there is no way that any sitting President approaching the end of his second term would ever want to drag the US deeper into an all out military conflict that by its nature precludes exit strategy” while predicting that his successor “will almost certainly take a far different and more robust approach.”

The timing of Obama’s claim that ISIL had been contained could not have been worse and came  only hours before  coordinated gun and bomb attacks hit the French capital city, Paris, on Friday night and left scores of people dead and hundreds more injured.

Daesh is reported to have claimed responsibility for the attacks. The terrorist group released an online audio statement in Arabic and French on Saturday, saying the attack was the “first of the storm and a warning to those who wish to learn.”