Michael Weiss: ISIS Has ‘Global Ambitions,’ ‘Presence’ In Europe

Foreign policy columnist Michael Weiss said that ISIS has both “global ambitions” and a “presence” in Europe on Monday’s “CNN Tonight.”

Weiss argued that the message of ISIS’ latest video, of the murder of European Christians was intended to tell Christians “we’re coming to get you.”

He continued, “they’ve sent that message before in Iraq, haven’t they? Look, ISIS bills its campaign as one against–arranged against what they call the Crusader Jewish conspiracy, the crusaders being the United States, the Jews being Israel, and its assorted allies and such. I think there’s another message kind of embedded in this one. Which is we’re now a stone’s throw away from EU territory, quite close to Crete, quite close to Italy, we’re talking northern Libya here. This is supposed to be terrifying. ISIS has always said — their caliphate may be–may expand from Syria to Iraq, but they have global ambitions. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi himself said if we’re lucky we’ll conquer Rome and then move on to…Spain. So, they have a presence in Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and indeed, in Europe. The other thing that they do is they say, ‘if you guys–oh brothers, if you can’t come join the jihad in Raqqa or Mosul, stay where you are, just stay where you are and perpetrate attacks. That’s fine. So,–what you’re going see is ISIS-inspired attacks elsewhere.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett