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ISIS Battle Could Take Years; ISIS Executioner Identified; Iranian President Blames West for Extremism

Aired September 25, 2014 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. I'm Brianna Keilar, reporting from Washington. Wolf Blitzer is off today.

Days after getting congressional approval to train and arm Syria's moderate rebels President Obama ordered air strikes and we are now three days into the air campaign in Syria and Pentagon officials say it could be a year's long battle.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REAR ADM. JOHN KIRBY, PENTAGON SPOKESMAN: I can't tell you it's three, five, six, but it's probably several years at the very least and we're going to be prepared for that. Hopefully it won't take that long. They have a radical, disastrous ideology that is increasingly being rejected. Is that the answer? Good governance is ultimately the answer in Iraq and Syria. If good governance gets started in Iraq and we think the vectors are in the right direction there and we can get rid of the Assad regime or the regime will go in Syria, then there's a chance there, too, but it's going to take a while.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Joining me now is California Republican Congressman Ed Royce, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Chairman, thanks for being with us.

REP. ED ROYCE, (R-CA), CHAIRMAN, HOUSE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE: Thank you, Brianna.

KEILAR: You have been I guess you could say frustrated, critical of President Obama really with the pace of how he's dealt with ISIS. Now we have these air strikes in Syria. What do you think of this?

ROYCE: Well, I have been in contact with the Kurdish foreign minister and those representing the Kurdish communities and, yes, the frustration is that we had these Kurdish battalions, men and female battalions, holding off ISIS without the air support that they felt they needed. Now that air support is coming forward and that's very positive. But it's the pace. 116,000 air strikes in the First Gulf War when Kuwait was invaded were done in a matter of several weeks, six weeks, and, you know, it defeated the fifth largest army in the world at the time. In this particular case, you have a situation where it has been so long in coming, that ISIL has been able to take over a lot of territory and frankly practice a tremendous amount of cruelty on the ground, including especially to, you know, the women and girls of those who they have defeated. It was not necessary to allow them to take this much ground against such a vast population and I'm glad to see the air strikes.

KEILAR: The pace of the air strikes as they are now, you may have wanted to see this sooner, but are you happy now with what you are seeing? Do you think this is the right move in what you're seeing now?

ROYCE: I think it's very encouraging to see the Saudi air force in the air, the UAE, including this female pilot you referenced, the fact that you see the Jordanians involved in the air campaign, from Bahrain as well, this is the type of coalition in the region you want to see in the air. What we need to see next is the transfer of the types of weapons needed by the Kurdish forces, and not just the Kurdish forces in Iraq, buts also the Kurdish forces that -- over the last two days were fleeing from Syria. It's high time we gave them the assets they need.

KEILAR: You heard the Pentagon spokesman there really I think managing expectations. The Obama administration is now telling the American people this is going to be a year's-long battle, you need to prepare for that. What's your reaction to that?

ROYCE: Seven months ago, the request was made to start hitting these ISIS columns as they were coming out of Syria into Iraq when they were on the open desert and they were easy targets. Now, if you wait for a year or two years and you dribble out a strategy, you won't put a decisive end to an organization like that. But on the other hand, if you have a very robust air campaign and you put together the coalition partners and you go in and arm the Arabs and the Kurdish forces that want to fight them -- and remember, in the past, we were successful in getting the Sunnis in Anbar Province to rise up against, you know, al Qaeda and to defeat them, and -- but to do that, it takes a strategy. And it takes a robust effort. Now we don't want to see U.S. troops in there. We don't want to see the 82nd Airborne put into this cauldron, but we certainly want those who have been fighting ISIS now for a considerable length of time to get the weapons, pick up the pace here. And I think if we pick up the pace, we're going to see a lot of discouraged young men who may want to take their Western passports right now and get on a plane because they think -- they think ISIS is winning. When they see that fortune reversed on the ground, the female battalions of Kurdish women defeating ISIL units, as happened last week, I think some of the young men will reconsider flying in to join that effort.

KEILAR: I guess I'm asking you sort of the political question of this, though. President Obama is -- he's doing something that I would say Republicans are much more comfortable with than Democrats, and I'm sort of trying to get -- I'm trying to get to the point here of, does he deserve credit for that in your view?

ROYCE: Well, I think his national security team has sort of pushed the president into this position. As we remember, you know, well over a year ago, General Petraeus, CIA director, along with his secretary of defense, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the time, came to him and said, you need to have a decisive plan to deal with this. You need to support the Free Syrian forces and so forth. And the president vetoed that plan that was pushed. It was a very long process to get the president to the point where he could endorse the idea of responding with air power against ISIS. And as I mentioned, it cost on the ground 16 cities that were taken by ISIS as that process laboriously went forward. So what we need are decisions quicker that are decisive. And I think the president has made the right decision here in terms of the coalition. But it is important for us, and certainly in Congress, as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I've been talking to the ambassadors of these countries pressing this case, we're all in this together. The president, the members of Congress, the American public, we all need to get behind an effort here to extinguish this, destroy this ISIS campaign, this ISIS effort over there as soon as we possibly can in order to discourage the continued development of this jihadist activity.

KEILAR: Chairman Ed Royce, thanks for being with us. Appreciate it.

We'll be right back after a moment.

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

KEILAR: We are following breaking news about the ISIS militant in the video of Journalist James Foley's killing. We now -- I understand, Pamela Brown joining us from the FBI right outside the FBI building.

What have we learned? This executioner has been identified?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. We learned from FBI Director James Comey that U.S. officials are confident that they have identified the executioner, the ISIS executioner we've seen in several hostage videos and officials believe that, in fact, it is the same person. Now we did report this a couple weeks ago that officials believe that they have the guy who they believe committed these horrific crimes and now we're hearing from FBI Director James Comey that, in fact, they believe they know who this person is. He would not talk about the identity of this person, a name or anything like that, but we've learned from officials that it's someone who is from Great Britain and from London with ties to extremists who are living in London. We've reported that previously and now we're hearing confirmation from James Comey that officials have I.D.'d the executioner.

KEILAR: This is one of the more chilling things about this, this executioner had a distinct British accent, from south London, some believe just from listening to him. This is part of the propaganda put out by ISIS, that it is someone in a way sounds very much like someone next door, in particular, we've heard as well from an ISIS representative recently who appears to have maybe an American accent?

BROWN: Right. And I think that was what was so alarming when the video first surfaced and immediately they started voice analysis and were able to trace this man's accent to London and, from there, I believe, it was a combination of factors not only with the analysis but metadata and human sources played a role in officials being able to identify who this person is.

KEILAR: All right. Pam, there at the FBI building for us.

I want to bring back in the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce, joining us from California.

Chairman, this is very significant, right? Give us your reaction to this?

ROYCE: Well, the reason this is so important is that there's close to a thousand young men like this one from Britain who are fighting with this ISIS organization today, as well as 300 from the United States, approximately, and they hold these passports, just as this young man holds this passport. The fact that they're willing to commit this kind of mayhem and murder and at the same time advocate coming back to Europe and coming to the United States and carrying out these attacks is the very reason why Interpol, why the British intelligence agencies and the United States, are working right now to track who these young men are. At the same time, in my committee, as the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, we're going to move legislation when we go back on November 12th, to try to get a better handle on those who try to come back into the United States and make sure that they're apprehended if they did, in fact, end up going into Turkey and over the border into Syria and were involved in these kinds of operations with ISIS.

ROYCE: So this man be the tip of the iceberg in way and that was -- it's -- it's important to note that if U.S. authorities have identified this man who had a British accent, and we understand that this -- that's all we're being told, he is British, explain why his name isn't being made public if he's the tip of the iceberg. I'm assuming it has something to do with the fact that authorities don't want to give away their lead here?

ROYCE: That is exactly right. Remember, he is recruiting just as the Australian who is putting out the videos and sending back the message, he's there with his 9-year-old and 7-year-old son, an Australian ISIS leader along with about 300 Australians who have been recruited into this effort. He's trying to recruit more. And the Australian service just managed to put down an attempted attack in the homeland. The fellow who put out the video, in fact, carried out a previous attack and attempted bombing of a government building in Australia. He served time for it. Clearly, these individuals have the capability of carrying out these attacks. The question is, can we intercept them and one of the reasons you don't give him a lot of publicity unnecessarily is because, yes, they're following up on his other contacts back in Britain. They are also making certain that this isn't used for recruitment purposes.

KEILAR: Certainly.

Chairman Ed Royce, thanks so much for your insight on that.

We'll be back after just a moment.

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KEILAR: The Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says the extremists of the world have found each other and are uniting around a single goal, the destruction of civilization. From New York to Mosul, terrorism is becoming globalized, Rouhani said, as he addressed the United Nations General Assembly just hours ago, and he blamed the West for making what he called "strategic blunders" in the Middle East, turning the region into a haven for extremists.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HASSAN ROUHANI, PRESIDENT OF IRAN (through translation): Extremism is not a regional issue that only the nations of our region have to grapple with. Extremism is a global issue. Certain states have helped in creating it and are now failing to withstand it. Currently, our peoples are paying the price. Today's anti-Westernism is the offspring of yesterday's colonialism. Today's anti-Westernism is a reaction to yesterday's racism.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Let's get some analysis on this. We'll bring in Fareed Zakaria, the host of CNN's "Fareed Zakaria, GPS."

I wonder, Fareed, as you watch this speech and something that so many people were paying close attention to, what struck you most about it?

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST, FAREED ZAKARIA, GPS: It wasn't a particularly interesting or dramatic speech. It repeated themes that the Iranians have been saying for a while. Rouhani has been more forthcoming in interviews he's done. I had an opportunity to do one of them. In those, what becomes clear is the Iranians believe that they can be part of the solution in Iraq, in Syria, with regard to ISIS, even in Afghanistan, but first the nuclear deal has to be achieved. They are putting a lot of hope and a certain amount of pressure on the West to produce a nuclear agreement, a compromise that everyone can live with, and then they say they could be helpful for issues of shared interest, common interests in the fight against ISIS.

KEILAR: Certainly coupling issues that the West that the U.S. does not want to have coupled there, Fareed. You had an interview with the Iranian president yesterday. He's critical of these air strikes in Syria. What did he tell you?

ZAKARIA: Well, he's critical of them but I think it's important to note the criticism is very muted. It's of two forms. One is what you heard in the speech. This is all the West's fault. You invaded Iraq. You created instability. You created a haven for this kind of activity. The second is rather technical grounds, which is that it's technically not something that can be sanctioned by international law because it doesn't have U.N. approval and it didn't have the Syrian government's approval. He moves off that pretty quickly. He's in favor of battling ISIS. He does not -- there's no condemnation of U.S. air strikes. I think that they would very much like, the Iranians, that is, have the United States take an active part in the struggle against ISIS. They just want to make sure they get the nuclear deal.

KEILAR: Let's listen to part of Fareed's interview with Rouhani.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: When you say you don't want the United States to fight ISIS, but in the fighting of it, to create another terrorist group, what group are you thinking of?

ROUHANI (through translation): The American authorities themselves have announced that they wish to train another terrorist group and equip that group and send them to Syria to fight.

ZAKARIA: You mean the Free Syrian Army?

ROUHANI (through translation): You can call it whatever you wish, sir. Be that as it may, it is a group -- it is another group that -- as they have announced, I'm not sure what their plan is -- they say we wish to train these folks in another country, military training, and they even announced a time frame. With whose permission, with whose authority, with what mandate according to what international laws and norms are they doing this?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: That was fascinating, Fareed because he was smirking at the suggestion that the rebels, that the U.S. is now overtly arming, are a real ally when it comes to combating ISIS in Syria.

ZAKARIA: Exactly right. Remember, the Iranian government supports the Syrian government, so it takes the Syrian government's position that those rebels, the Free Syrian Army, are a bunch of terrorists. It highlights what is going to be the thorniest aspect of President Obama's strategy against ISIS, which is that, in Syria, the president is saying he's going to fight ISIS, but then he's going to somehow not let that benefit the main adversary of ISIS, that's the Assad government, by helping the third group, the Free Syrian Army, that's weak, disorganized, and so far has not been able to hold significant territory. And so if the Iranians push very hard against that Free Syrian Army, it's going to make it much, much harder. And somehow, it feels to me the United States has to get engaged with Iran in a conversation about what Syria is going to look like politically, because if everybody from the outside is supporting another -- one or the other group, you have a 12-cornered civil war, and maybe we won't defeat ISIS and certainly we will create a hell of a lot of chaos in Syria. Iran has more influence on the Syrian government than any government in the world. It feels to me like the path to some political progress in Syria is going to have to run through Tehran.

KEILAR: Certainly will.

Fareed Zakaria, thank you so much. Great to share your interview with us. And I want to share this programming note with you. Be sure to watch

"Fareed Zakaria, GPS," Sundays at 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. eastern only here on CNN.

That's it for me. I'll be back at 5:00 Eastern in "THE SITUATION ROOM."

"NEWSROOM" with Anderson Cooper starts right after a quick break.

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