The Pentagon said Friday that it has disabled nearly three-quarters of the Islamic State’s oil infrastructure, prompting GOP front-runner Donald Trump to say the military is now “doing what I said.”
Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, told reporters that a mission to end the Islamic State’s use of oil fields to fund their terrorist network is about 70 percent complete.
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Operation Tidal Wave II aims to completely shut down oil fields controlled by the Islamic State, the majority of which are located near Dayz az Zawr in eastern Syria, Warren said. The mission is named after Operation Tidal Wave I, which targeted Nazi oil fields during World War II.
The Islamic State is making about $500 million a year from oil, according to reports. Rendering the oil fields unusable will cut off that form of funding.
Trump said one of his first priorities in a national security strategy would be to strip the Islamic State of its ability to fund its activities, a position he reiterated during the fourth Republican debate on Tuesday.
“I didn’t want to go there in the first place, but now we take the oil. We should have kept the oil, now we go in, we knock the hell out of them, take their oil. We thereby take their wealth,” Trump said during a “Fox and Friends” appearance in August.
On Friday, Trump took credit for the strategy on Twitter.
“They laughed at me when I said to bomb the ISIS controlled oil fields. Now they are not laughing and doing what I said.”
They laughed at me when I said to bomb the ISIS controlled oil fields. Now they are not laughing and doing what I said. #Trump2016
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 13, 2015
Top military officials, including now-retired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno, said they disagreed with Trump’s plan, saying that economic and political stability, not just military power, must play a role in ending the conflict.
Warren said the coalition has been striking the Islamic State’s oil assets from the beginning of the campaign, but found that the parts of the oil infrastructure it had been destroying could be easily repaired. They routinely saw the Islamic State fix the damage and have the infrastructure up and running within 48 hours.
“We realized we needed to relook at how we were targeting these oil facilities,” Warren said. “We did a detailed analysis to determine how can we strike the oil fields to break them for longer.”
As a result, the U.S. revised its strategy to strike pieces of the oil infrastructure that will take about a year to fix or replace. Now, the strikes seek to destroy things that either the Islamic State does not have the technical capability to fix or pieces for which the replacement parts are too difficult to find.
He declined to provide details about what parts specifically are targeted or who the U.S. is consulting for advice on how to disable the infrastructure long term.
Even though the goal is to take the infrastructure offline for an extended period to hurt the terrorist group’s finances, Warren said the coalition is careful not to permanently destroy the infrastructure.
“We have to be cognizant that there will be a time after the war, the war will end, so we don’t want to completely and utterly destroy these facilities to where they’re irreparable,” Warren told reporters at the Pentagon via video teleconference from Baghdad. “So what we’ve done is we’ve used very precise targeting, a very detailed analysis to strike certain parts of these facilities that will cause them to shut down for an extended period of time.”
One of the biggest battles in Iraq was over the Baiji oil refinery, which was contested for months as the Islamic State and Iraqi security forces fought for control. Warren said the refinery is totally in Iraqi control and was turned over to the Ministry of Oil while troops continue clearing operations.
