The Obama administration’s top envoy to the Iraq coalition fighting Islamic State extremists says the military push to recapture the city of Mosul is progressing and that militants are increasingly on the defensive.

Speaking Sunday in Jordan, envoy Brett McGurk also told reporters the West is winning the ideological war against IS with a round-the-clock propaganda campaign mounted by Facebook, YouTube and the governments of Jordan, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates.

“For every pro-Daesh Twitter handle, there are now six calling out its lies and countering its message,” McGurk said, referring to Islamic State with a widely used Arabic term of contempt. He also described “precision [coalition] air strikes in Mosul almost every day,” and said civilians in the embattled city are providing intelligence about IS movements from the inside.

McGurk singled out Jordan for its role in the coalition, noting that the Amman government has been conducting weekly airstrikes on IS targets while gathering intelligence and circulating anti-IS propaganda.

Faced with a rapid Islamic State advance in 2014, Iraqi forces collapsed, allowing the militant group to overrun about a third of the country.

IS leaders then declared an Islamic caliphate in areas under its control in Iraq and nearby Syria, where the group also controls large swaths of territory, and where it also has committed widespread atrocities against the civilian population.

The U.S.-led coalition of Western and Arab nations countered with airstrikes and other military action against Islamic State later in 2014, killing what authorities describe as thousands of militants and liberating a string of cities and towns under IS control.
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