WASHINGTON – By expanding his military campaign against the Islamic State group, President Barack Obama hopes to reverse the militants' momentum in Iraq, squeeze their sanctuary in Syria and erode their recruiting appeal across the greater Mideast. Those are key steps toward Obama's stated goal of eventually destroying the extremist group.

The strategy's success, however, also hinges on a set of more difficult moves: effective coordination with Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces, undercutting financial and ideological support for the Islamic State group, and building up anti-Islamic State forces in Syria without strengthening the regime of President Bashar Assad, which Obama considers illegitimate.

These U.S. gains are unlikely to occur quickly, but broadening U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and extending them to Syria could "change the reality and the perception of whether ISIL has the momentum or whether they are being rocked back on their heels," said Michele Flournoy, the Obama administration's first policy chief at the Pentagon and now the chief executive officer at the Center for a New American Security think tank. ISIL is an alternative acronym for the Islamic State group.

Undermining the Islamic State group's popular image as a military steamroller is especially important, particularly in the short run, she said.

"On the Iraq side of the border it has already begun," she said.

Five weeks of U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State forces in northern and western Iraq have taken a military and perhaps psychological toll, compelling those forces to disperse and assume more defensive positions, according to U.S. defense officials. That has stalled their offensive, which swiftly routed Iraqi troops in the north in June and gave Islamic State fighters the appearance of being an unstoppable force, prompting Obama to begin limited bombing Aug. 8.

Last weekend, the U.S. began airstrikes around the Haditha Dam west of Baghdad, marking an expansion of the mission. With his announcement Wednesday, Obama essentially has lifted all restrictions on Islamic State targets in Iraq, meaning the air campaign will intensify, broaden and perhaps exact a heavier toll. To facilitate the additional strikes, Obama authorized U.S. soldiers to begin embedding with the Iraqi army — not to fight alongside them but to help them profit from U.S. airstrikes.

Obama made clear the task won't be easy.

"Now it will take time to eradicate a cancer like ISIL," Obama said in his televised address to the nation. "And any time we take military action, there are risks involved."

The Pentagon said Wednesday, before Obama's speech, that U.S. warplanes had conducted 154 airstrikes in Iraq so far, damaging or destroying 212 Islamic State targets, including 162 vehicles.

Obama has been firm in refusing to commit U.S. ground combat forces in Iraq, having staked his 2008 presidential candidacy on ending the war started by his predecessor. But expanding the air campaign means the U.S. military role will extend beyond the fighters, bombers and armed drones that have carried the bulk of the attack load so far, supported by refueling aircraft. It will include 150 U.S. military advisers operating in the field with Iraqi commanders, plus 125 to fly and maintain Iraq-based U.S. surveillance aircraft to collect targeting information for Iraqi troops.

Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank, says only about one-third of the Islamic State force — which others have estimated may total 20,000 to 30,000 fighters — are highly skilled. Cordesman believes Iraqi government forces can handle them with U.S. assistance, although he predicted in an analysis published Tuesday that it probably will take several years to create sufficient political and military unity in Iraq to fully defeat the Islamic State forces there.

"There is no clear timeframe for a similar defeat in Syria," he added.

Flournoy, who served as the undersecretary of defense for policy from 2009-2012, said this week that Obama has little choice but to extend the fight to Syria. She said U.S. planes could target Islamic State headquarters buildings, training sites and supply lines used to reinforce its fighters in Iraq.

"This will take time" to undercut the extremists' ability to function as a land army and an administrator of large chunks of Iraqi territory, she said. "This is not going to happen in a matter of weeks or months."

Douglas A. Ollivant, a retired Army officer who was director for Iraq on the National Security Council in the late stages of the Iraq War, said U.S. airstrikes in Syria would be designed to support the ground war in Iraq and make Syria less useful as a support base for Islamic State forces. But that approach has its limitations.

"We're under no illusions that doing airstrikes alone in Syria is going to kick them out of Syria," he said.

In the longer run, more fundamental shifts could create a "new map of Mesopotamia," according to Bing West, a retired Marine officer and author of "One Million Steps, a Marine Platoon at War."

After a few years of U.S. bombing coordinated by special operations forces on the ground in Iraq, the Islamic extremists will be squeezed out and Sunni tribal leaders in western Iraq are likely to coalesce to form what amounts to an independent state, as the Kurds have done over the past decade in northeastern Iraq, he said in an email exchange Wednesday.

At a glance

President Barack Obama went before the American people Wednesday to lay out his plan to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the Islamic State militants who have seized control of a huge stretch of Syria and Iraq. A look at his plan, the extremists and the campaign to defeat them.

THE STRATEGY: Obama wants to step up military and diplomatic efforts to counter the extremists in Iraq and Syria. That means arming Syrian opposition forces and extending U.S. airstrikes into Syria. (The U.S. already is bombing Islamic State targets in Iraq.) The president also said he would send another 475 U.S. troops into Iraq to advise that country's forces, but insists they are not combat troops. And he's pressing for an expanded global coalition of at least 40 nations united against the militants, with Canada, Australia, numerous European countries, Sunni Arab allies and NATO member Turkey playing leading roles. Arab countries are meeting in Saudi Arabia on Thursday to discuss a parallel coalition.

CONGRESS' ROLE: There will be plenty of debate in coming days about how much say Congress has in all of this. Already, House Republicans have rebuffed Obama's requests for explicit approval to train and equip Syrian rebels, although the Senate may give its OK. On the broader campaign to defeat the Islamic State group, Obama says he has the authority to proceed on his own. But there are mixed opinions about that within Congress.

THE MILITANTS: The Islamic State group has seized one-third of Syria and Iraq and wants to create an Islamic state, or caliphate, ruled by a strict form of Shariah law that orders women to stay inside their homes, bans music and punishes thieves by cutting off their hands, among other restrictions. Formerly known as al-Qaida in Iraq, it is a Sunni-led group that emerged from the sectarian violence of the Iraq War and the Syrian civil war. In 2004, the State Department classified it a terrorist organization. The group, which recently beheaded two American journalists, has developed such a brutal reputation that in February it was disavowed even by the core al-Qaida organization. ISIS and ISIL are older acronyms for the same organization.

THE THREAT: The Obama administration doesn't think the militants pose any immediate threat of an attack in the U.S. But it believes the group is a threat to the Middle East and could attack U.S. targets overseas. The U.S. also worries about the group training and radicalizing Americans who could later return to attack America.

THE RESPONSE, SO FAR: The U.S. already has launched about 150 airstrikes on Islamic State targets inside Iraq, at the invitation of the Iraqi government. It also has sent military advisers, supplies and humanitarian aid to help Iraqi troops and Kurdish forces beat back the insurgents. — AP

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