WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama, reviewing progress in combating the so-called Islamic State (IS) with his national security team at the Pentagon on Aug. 4, said the group will inevitably be defeated militarily and driven from its remaining strongholds of Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria. But a long-term solution to IS will require an end to the Syrian civil war, Obama said, and he rebuked Russia for backing the Syrian regime’s advances on Aleppo, suggesting ongoing US-Russian negotiations on possible deeper cooperation in Syria are unlikely to reach agreement anytime soon.

IS forces “have not had a major successful offensive operation in either Iraq or Syria in a full year,” Obama told journalists at the Pentagon after convening a National Security Council meeting to review progress in the fight against IS on Aug. 4.

They “are inevitably going to be defeated,” Obama said. “But the situation is complex. They are not going to be defeated [by the military] alone.”

“In Syria, defeating [IS] and al-Qaeda requires the end of the civil war,” Obama said. “The regime and its allies continue to violate the cessation of hostilities, including with vicious attacks on defenseless civilians, medieval sieges on cities like Aleppo. … It is deplorable and [shows] the depravity of the Syrian regime.”