Same day al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula seized two towns in southern Yemen.

Via PJM:

Secretary of State John Kerry told Rolling Stone magazine that “defeating” ISIS will look “like al-Qaeda — you reduce it to a nuisance, where it’s not a daily threat.”

Though the Obama administration has vowed to destroy ISIS, President Obama mirrored that al-Qaeda analogy back in September 2014, saying the U.S. is “going to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL the same way we have gone after al-Qaeda.”

That was the same month that al-Qaeda announced a new chapter, uniting militant groups under al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent. In February they butchered to death an American blogger visiting Bangladesh, Avijit Roy.

“It doesn’t have operational capacity in a lot of countries. Its core leadership has been destroyed. It’s been reduced in its ability to threaten countries. Obviously, you’ll have a few radicals around, but you terminate its ability to have a core, a state, as well as revenue-raising, paying salaries, hiring people, attracting people and giving orders to people. All of that can come to an abrupt end if we get our act together,” Kerry said of ISIS, which has expanded in Libya, the Caucasus and West Africa.

Kerry added that “whether it happens or not is up to Iran and Russia.”

Just before saying ISIS had to be reduced to an al-Qaeda-style “nuisance,” the secretary of State said that “no matter what, we have to destroy ISIL.”