Pentagon lays out plan to defeat ISIS within a year

The Pentagon has presented the White House with its preliminary plans to defeat the Islamic State terror group after President Donald Trump asked for a blueprint to annihilate the jihadis about a month ago.

During the presidential campaign, Trump had promised to intensify the fight against ISIS which began under the administration of former President Barack Obama. On Jan. 28, Trump issued an executive order in which he asked for a "preliminary draft" of a plan to defeat ISIS to be submitted to him within 30 days.

On Monday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis presented the initial draft of the plan to Trump's top national security advisors.

Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said that the details of the report are classified, and it still needs to be further refined. He stated that the report is "a framework for a broader discussion" of a strategy that has to be developed over time, rather than a ready-to-execute military plan.

He further noted that the report defines what it means to defeat ISIS, which he declined to reveal to reporters.

Davis also explained that the report includes some individual actions that will require decisions by the White House, adding that "it's not a 'check-the-block, pick A or B or C' kind of a plan."

"This is a broad plan. It is global. It is not just military. It is not just Iraq/Syria," he said, as reported by The Stream.

Officials familiar with the review said that the report increases emphasis on nonmilitary options, such as efforts to limit the ability of ISIS to recruit and squeezing the group's finances.

Last week, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that al-Qaeda and other extremist organizations in the Middle East, whose goal is to attack the U.S., will also be targeted in the emerging strategy.

The officials also indicated that the recommended approaches will be patterned after the central elements of the Obama administration's strategy, which focused on the U.S. military supporting local forces rather than fighting for them. Mattis had also suggested that he does not see any advantage in having U.S. combat forces take over the ground war.

"I would just tell you that by, with and through our allies is the way this coalition is going against Daesh," he said in Baghdad last week, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.