Just hours after the United States announced it would begin air strikes on militants in the north of Iraq, a propaganda video from the Islamic State emerged online with the warning: “We will drown you in blood.”
That was on August 17 and by Tuesday, after more than 70 air strikes from US fighter jets and drones – launched, President Barack Obama said, to protect besieged minorities trapped by Islamist militants as well as its own strategic interests in Iraq – the Islamic State appeared to have made good its threat.
Another propaganda video appeared overnight, this one showing the gruesome beheading of American journalist James Foley, in retaliation, his executioner says, for the air strikes in Iraq.
Speaking English with a British accent, the masked executioner identifies a second journalist, believed to be Steve Sotloff, and warns: “The life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next decision.”
Suddenly, President Obama’s announcement on Monday that Iraqi and Kurdish forces, with US air support, had retaken the strategic dam north of Mosul from Sunni militants took on new meaning.
Foley, 40, went missing in near the northern Syrian town of Taftanaz while freelancing for Global Post and Agence France-Presse in November 2012. Sotloff has been missing since last August.
The journalists were just two of at least 20 reporters – local and international – that the Islamic State is holding, as well as several teams of aid workers, human rights groups estimate.
The significant number of foreign hostages under its control provides the Islamic State with “immensely dangerous leverage”, visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar, Charles Lister said.
“Despite being framed as 'punishment' for US airstrikes, IS is baiting Obama to retaliate and expand [US] horizons to Syria,” Mr Lister commented on Twitter.
Message: A Kurdish fighter pulls down a flag belonging to Islamic State militants at the Mosul Dam on Tuesday.
At the moment, the Islamic State looks to be an almost unbeatable force in north-eastern Syria and Iraq, Mr Lister warns.
“Neither the Syrian or Iraqi governments, the Kurds, other armed groups, or Western governments appear to have the capability or urgency or backbone to implement the decisions and actions necessary to begin a long-term process of fighting back,” he wrote in the Huffington Post this week.
Shiraz Maher, a senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, told Fairfax Media the fact that IS felt it could directly address the US President indicates how much influence the group believes it already has in Syria and Iraq.
“The video was very clearly directed towards Obama,” Mr Maher said. “They were saying: 'The fate of this man [Sotloff] is in your hands … we want you to stay out of our internal affairs, we don’t want you to have any form of any involvement in Iraq’.
“It is an incredibly powerful move from them – to address the most powerful leader in the world in that way shows you how they see themselves.”
The Islamic State had seemingly been given “free reign to do whatever they like in Syria and now in Iraq”, he said, and the US military commitment in Iraq is still very narrow.
Mr Maher expects that IS will continue to fight to acquire new territory and consolidate what they already have, and says there is no doubt they will gain some new followers with the release of the horrific execution video.
“To the ordinary person these things are horrific … but to the people interested in ISIS or who are wanting to join or committed to it, this kind of event emboldens them,” he said.
In the video posted on YouTube, then later removed, Mr Foley is forced to recite a statement against the US actions in Iraq, specifically addressing his brother John, a US soldier.
“I died that day John, when your colleagues dropped that bomb on those people they signed my death certificate,” Foley says, under knifepoint.
His executioner goes on to say: “Today, your military air force is attacking us daily in Iraq, your strikes have caused casualties among Muslims. You're no longer fighting an insurgency, we are an Islamic army …
“Any attempt by you Obama to deny the Muslims their rights of living in safety under the Islamic caliphate will result in the bloodshed of your people.”
Both journalists were wearing orange jumpsuits similar to those worn by detainees in the controversial offshore US prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Read more: Islamic State makes true on 'blood' threat, killing US journalist James Foley