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Neither incident was mentioned during the audio speech but it did refer to President Barack Obama’s recent decision to deploy an addition 1,500 troops to Iraq, as well as pledges of support ISIS had received from other terrorist factions in the region.

“This indicates that he is still alive,” said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intelligence Group in Washington, D.C., which analyzed the speech after ISIS released it on Twitter along with Arabic, English and Russian transcripts.

Partly an attempt to rally his own forces amidst coalition air strikes that have killed hundreds of his fighters, and partly to deter further international intervention, the speech downplayed the anti-ISIS air campaign as ineffective and doomed to fail.

“We see America and its allies stumbling between fear, weakness, inability, and failure. America, Europe, Australia, Canada, their apostate tails and slaves from amongst the rulers of the Muslims’ lands were terrified by the Islamic State,” he said.

But at a briefing Thursday, the Commander of Joint Task Force-Iraq, Col. Dan Constable, said the air campaign was already taking its toll on ISIS. “I can tell you that we are seeing definite signs that coalition air operations are having the desired effect,” he said.

ISIS has been forced to alter tactics to avoid being targeted from above, resulting in a loss of “freedom of movement,” he said. “They are much more cautious in how they maneuver within Iraq and are forced to operate in a defensive manner.”