November 1 2019
The United States and its partners made major strides to defeat and degrade international terrorist organizations in 2018. Together, we liberated nearly all the territory ISIS previously held in Syria and Iraq, freeing 110,000 square kilometers and roughly 7.7 million men, women, and children from ISIS’s brutal rule. These successes set the stage for the final destruction of the so-called “caliphate” in 2019. At the same time, the United States and its partners continued to pursue al-Qa’ida (AQ) globally, and the United States applied maximum pressure on Iran-backed terrorism, significantly expanding sanctions on Iranian state actors and proxies and building stronger international political will to counter those threats.
