The U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State aims this year to recapture Iraq's second city Mosul, working with Iraqi government forces, and drive the jihadis out of Raqqa, their stronghold in northeast Syria, Arab and Western officials say.
If it succeeds, the coalition will have struck a crippling blow against Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
The strategy is to regain territory at the heart of IS’s cross-border state, take both its "capitals", and destroy the confidence of its fighters that it can expand as a Sunni caliphate and magnet for jihadis, according to these Arab and Western officials, few of whom were willing to speak on the record on a matter of such strategic sensitivity.
“The plan is to hit them in Raqqa in Syria and in Iraq at Mosul, to crush their capitals,” said an Iraqi official with knowledge of the strategy.
