The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will question President Trump’s national security adviser Wednesday about the administration’s long-awaited plan to defeat the Islamic State, said Sen. Bob Corker, the panel’s chairman.
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster is set to brief senators during a closed-door meeting and Corker said the status of the new strategy for defeating the terrorist group will be a top concern. Similar private meetings have been held recently with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, according to Corker’s office.
“I’d just like to see [the plan],” Corker said. “I know that there was a 30-day review but we’ve seen no evidence of any documents that have been produced.”
Trump ordered the review soon after his inauguration, but has released no details as the military ramps up operations against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and considers deploying thousands more troops to help battle an offshoot of the group in Afghanistan.
Corker said he has traveled to Iraq and been briefed by top brass, so he has a strong understanding of current military operations there.
“What we haven’t seen is the overall ISIS strategy and it’s time that we see that,” he said.
In January, the president tasked Defense Secretary Jim Mattis with creating the plan within 30 days and a draft was reportedly delivered to the White House.
Trump has inherited an Obama administration war against the Islamic State that started with airstrikes in Iraq in 2014 and has since expanded to war-torn Syria and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the Islamic State sprouted up in various other countries around the globe.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated to reflect that McMaster is expected to answer senator’s questions but not deliver a completed Islamic State strategy.
