The Islamic State (ISIS) terror group still poses a serious threat and is "well-positioned" to reconstruct its caliphate, the Pentagon admitted this week.
One day after the White House said the ISIS caliphate has been destroyed, Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Sean Robertson told Voice of America the group remains a constant threat to the rest of the world.
ISIS "is well-positioned to rebuild and work on enabling its physical caliphate to re-emerge," Robertson said.
"ISIS probably is still more capable than al-Qaida in Iraq at its peak in 2006-2007, when the group had declared an Islamic State and operated under the name Islamic State of Iraq. ISIS remains a threat, and even one ISIS fighter is one too many."
The United Nations recently released a report in which it estimated that ISIS has a force of 30,000 fighters, equally distributed in Iraq and Syria. The group's de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria fell last fall after months of heavy fighting.
Last year after President Donald Trump took office, the U.S. military stepped up its efforts to defeat the terror group and take back the lands it had invaded in the Middle East.
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