Obama To Set Out New 'Game Plan' to Defeat Isis

US president Barack Obama said that he is going to set out his strategy to defeat radical Islamist group Isis in a speech on Wednesday.

Obama was widely derided for saying "we don't have a strategy yet" at a recent press briefing, after the Islamist group seized control of swathes of Syria and Iraq.

Speaking on NBC's Meet the Press, Mr Obama said: "I'm preparing the country to make sure that we deal with a threat from Isil."

Islamic State forces – the name that Isil (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and Isis (Islamic State of Syria) is now calling themselves – has recently been bombed by US forces supporting Iraqi army and Kurdish peshmerga fighters, and released videos showing two US journalists taken hostage being beheaded in retaliation.

Mr Obama said: "On Wednesday, I'll make a speech and describe what our game plan's going to be going forward."

He said he would "start going on some offense" against Islamic State, but the strategy was "not going to be an announcement about US ground troops", he added.

Not another Iraq War

He said: "This is not the equivalent of the Iraq war. What this is, is similar to the kinds of counterterrorism campaigns that we've been engaging in consistently over the last five, six, seven years.

"I just want the American people to understand the nature of the threat and how we're going to deal with it and to have confidence that we'll be able to deal with it."

Mr Obama said that the US would not act alone but would act in a coalition with international partners.

He said: "We are going to be able to not just blunt the momentum of Isil. We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities. We're going to shrink the territory that they control. And ultimately we're going to defeat them."

Last week, an international group including the UK agreed to combat Isis at the Nato summit in Wales.

Earlier today, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said President Obama must start using military force against Islamic State, or else the US will loose its influence in the Middle East.