WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama said on Sunday that now was the time to launch a new offensive, including “military elements”, against the Islamic State militants.

Mr Obama plans to address his nation on Wednesday and outline his strategy for defeating the militants.

In interviews to various US television networks, senior Republican and Democratic lawmakers said they would support Mr Obama’s plan as they too believed that the IS, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham (ISIS), posed a major threat to US interests.

In the address, Mr Obama will “describe what our game plan’s going to be”, and meet congressional leaders on Tuesday to seek their support for the strategy.

“What I want people to understand is that over the course of months … we are going to systematically degrade their capabilities,” Mr Obama said in an interview aired on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press”.

“We’re going to shrink the territory that they control. And ultimately, we’re going to defeat them.”

Mr Obama, however, assured his war-weary nation that he had no plans to send US troops to either Iraq or Syria.

Although there would be a “military element” to the strategy, he would announce on Wednesday, “this is not going to be an announcement about US ground troops”, he said.

Yet, he said, his speech would prepare Americans for a new phase in US military actions against the militants.

“I’m preparing the country to make sure that we deal with a threat,” Mr Obama told NBC.

Despite America’s war-weariness, President Obama faces tremendous pressure — both in and outside Congress — to launch punitive actions against IS militants who recently beheaded two Americans journalist in Syria.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Mr Obama would outline plans for a more aggressive action against the militants.

“I think that this is a major change in how the IS is approached,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union”, noting that two days ago, the United States formed a new alliance against the IS, which includes Washington’s European and Middle Eastern partners.

“(The actions against the militants) is overdue, but the president is now there, and I think it’s the right thing for America,” Senator Feinstein said.

She said she would also support deploying the American military’s special operations forces in the region to ensure that the offensive against the militants succeed.

The senator also demanded a crackdown on sources of Islamic State funding to prevent its resurgence.

“ISIS is a major threat to this country in the future,” she said, claiming that the group wants to advance to Baghdad and to attack the US Embassy there.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, said in a statement issued by his office that the Islamic State threat was “real and it’s growing”.

He urged President Obama to “exercise some leadership” and to engage Congress with “a strategic plan”.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2014