WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s Iran policy is ultimately aimed at bringing Tehran to the negotiating table, the U.S. special envoy for Iran testified Wednesday as lawmakers demanded clarity about the administration’s strategy in the Middle East.

Both Trump and Iran said they are not seeking war, but many lawmakers fear that as the U.S. builds up its forces in the region, it increases the chances of the two sides being accidentally drawn into a conflict.

“No one should be uncertain about our desire for peace or our readiness to normalize relations should we reach a comprehensive deal,” Brian Hook told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. “We have put the possibility of a much brighter future on the table for the Iranian people.”

Hook added, “our pressure campaign is working.”

The Trump administration withdrew from the nuclear deal negotiated with Iran under President Barack Obama and began imposing layers of punishing sanctions on Tehran that have strangled its economy. The U.S. blames Iran for a number of attacks against U.S. or Western interests in the Middle East over the past few months, including on tankers near the Persian Gulf and a rocket attack near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Iran denies responsibility for the attacks.

Lawmakers, Democrats in particular, question whether the administration’s so-called maximum pressure campaign is really a recipe for war.

“Rather than force Iran back to the negotiating table, the administration’s policy is increasing the chances of miscalculation, which then would bring the United States and Iran closer to a military conflict,” said Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida, who chairs the House panel.

Hook told lawmakers that Iran has chosen to use military force despite Trump’s Iran policy largely relying on diplomatic and economic tools like sanctions.

“Our policy is at its core an economic and diplomatic one. Recently, however, Iran has responded to it with violence. Iran should meet diplomacy with diplomacy, not with terror, bloodshed and extortion” he said.

On Monday, Iran said it could soon start enriching uranium to just a step away from weapons-grade levels, breaching a cap that was set under the nuclear deal abandoned by the United States. The announcement followed warnings from President Hassan Rouhani that a new deal needs to be in place by July 7 or the Islamic Republic would increase its enrichment of uranium.

Officials said members of Congress were notified following a White House meeting Thursday to discuss Pentagon proposals to bolster the U.S. force presence in the Middle East.

The officials spoke Friday on condition of anonymity because the troop plans have not yet been formally announced.

Earlier this week, officials said Pentagon planners had outlined plans that could have sent up to 10,000 military reinforcements to the region. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan later said planners hadn’t settled on a figure.

The U.S. began reinforcing its presence in the Persian Gulf region this month in response to what it said was a threat from Iran.

Pelosi’s remarks to House Democrats came amid growing concerns in Congress over President Donald Trump’s approach to Iran and mounting tensions in the Persian Gulf region over the administration’s claims of unspecified threats linked to Iran. Top leaders in Congress are expected to receive a classified briefing from the administration on Thursday, but Pelosi said the administration has resisted a wider briefing for all lawmakers and congressional requests for more information.

“We have to avoid any war with Iran,” Pelosi told her colleagues, according to a person in the room, who was granted anonymity to discuss the private caucus meeting.

Pelosi warned that the administration cannot rely on the last use of force authorization approved by Congress nearly 20 years ago for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since last week, House leaders have been asking for a classified briefing for lawmakers on the situation with Iran, but Pelosi said the administration indicated it couldn’t come together “that fast.”

“They have no business declaring a war without the consent of Congress,” she said. “The very idea that they would say that they would use the authorization of the use of military force that is 18 years old” she said is “not appropriate in terms of its scope, its geography, its timing for any actions they might take.”

The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee also warned the administration against any action without approval from lawmakers.

“Congress has not authorized war with Iran, and the administration, if it were contemplating military action with Iran, must come to Congress to seek approval,” said Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., in a statement at a committee hearing.

Menendez said the Trump administration “has not provided any information to this committee on the intelligence behind their decisions or what they plan to do in Iraq or Iran.” He said he has “repeatedly reminded the administration” of its responsibility to brief the committee.

Multiple sources said Wednesday that top House and Senate leaders of both parties — eight lawmakers in all — would be briefed by the administration. The sources were not authorized to discuss the matter and were granted anonymity.

Thursday’s planned briefing for the “gang of eight” was scheduled after the U.S. ordered all nonessential government staff to leave Iraq. The U.S. earlier moved an aircraft carrier and other resources toward the region.

The administration canceled a separate briefing on Iran that had been scheduled for Wednesday with the House Intelligence Committee, according to people familiar with the situation.

Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

Hunter, R-Calif., screened combat footage collected from a helmet camera to a group of lawmakers Wednesday, saying the footage exonerates Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher of one of the charges against him.

“I wanted to give them an opportunity firsthand to see there is no case,” Hunter told a small group of reporters after the screening. He said he believes Gallagher is innocent and a war hero and admonished the military justice system, calling it “absolutely broken” and “rigged.”

“I don’t trust the Navy to give him a fair trial, but I think with all of the focus on this case that he stands more of a chance of getting a fair trial now,” Hunter said.

Gallagher is accused of killing a teenage Islamic State fighter under his care and then holding his reenlistment ceremony with the corpse. Navy prosecutors also accuse Gallagher of shooting two civilians in Iraq and opening fire on crowds. Gallagher has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

His lawyers have said he did not murder anyone and that disgruntled SEALs made the accusations because they wanted to get rid of a demanding platoon leader. His trial is set for May 28 at Naval Base San Diego.

Members of Congress have previously issued statements on Gallagher’s behalf. In March, 40 lawmakers signed a letter urging the Navy to free Gallagher pending trial. Soon after, Trump announced on Twitter that Gallagher would be moved to “less restrictive confinement.”

Trump has already used his pardon power in a military case, pardoning on Monday a former U.S. soldier convicted in 2009 of killing an Iraqi prisoner. Former Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna was convicted of unpremeditated murder in a combat zone after killing a suspected al-Qaida terrorist in Iraq.

A military court had sentenced Behenna to 25 years in prison. He was paroled in 2014 and had been scheduled to remain on parole until 2024.

Hunter, who represents a district in San Diego County and was an early Trump supporter in the 2016 presidential campaign, is himself facing federal corruption charges involving the personal use of campaign money. The congressman and his wife pleaded not guilty last year to a 60-count indictment alleging they spent more than $250,000 in campaign finance funds on family trips, tequila shots, Costco shopping sprees and other items. He won re-election despite the charges.

Hunter’s trial is scheduled for September.

Rogers and his deputy Richard Ledgett, who was present for the call, were taken aback.

Afterward, Ledgett wrote a memo about the conversation and Trump’s request. He and Rogers signed it and stashed it in a safe. Ledgett said it was the “most unusual thing he had experienced in 40 years of government service.”

Trump’s outreach to Rogers, who retired last year, and other top intelligence officials stands in sharp contrast to his public, combative stance toward his intelligence agencies. At the time of the call, Trump was just some 60 days into his presidency, but he already had managed to alienate large parts of the intelligence apparatus with comments denigrating the profession.

Since then, Trump only has dug in. He said at a news conference in Helsinki after his 2017 summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin that he gave weight to Putin’s denial that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, despite the firm conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies that it had. “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia, Trump said. And earlier this year, Trump called national security assessments “naive,” tweeting “perhaps intelligence should go back to school.”

Yet in moments of concern as Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election got underway, Trump turned to his spy chiefs for help.

The phone call to Rogers on March 26, 2017, came only weeks after then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions had angered Trump by stepping aside from the investigation. James Comey, the FBI director who would be fired that May, had just told Congress that the FBI was not only investigating Russian meddling in the election, but also possible links or coordination between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

The call to Rogers and others like it were uncovered by Mueller as he investigated possible obstruction. In his 448-page report released Thursday, Mueller concluded that while Trump attempted to seize control of the Russia investigation and bring it to a halt, the president was ultimately thwarted by those around him.

The special counsel said the evidence did not establish that Trump asked or directed intelligence officials to “stop or interfere with the FBI’s Russia investigation.” The requests to those officials, Mueller said, “were not interpreted by the officials who received them as directives to improperly interfere with the investigation.”

During the call to Rogers, the president “expressed frustration with the Russia investigation, saying that it made relations with the Russians difficult,” according to the report.

Trump said news stories linking him with Russia were not true and he asked Rogers “if he could do anything to refute the stories.” Even though Rogers signed the memo about the conversation and put it in a safe, he told investigators he did not think Trump was giving him an order.

Trump made a number of similar requests of other top intelligence officials.

On March 22, 2017, Trump asked then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo and National Intelligence Director Dan Coats to stay behind after a meeting at the White House to ask if the men could “say publicly that no link existed between him and Russia,” the report said.

In two other instances, the president began meetings to discuss sensitive intelligence matters by stating he hoped a media statement could be issued saying there was no collusion with Russia.

After Trump repeatedly brought up the Russia investigation with his national intelligence director, “Coats said he finally told the President that Coats’s job was to provide intelligence and not get involved in investigations,” the report said.

Pompeo recalled that Trump regularly urged officials to get the word out that he had not done anything wrong related to Russia. But Pompeo, now secretary of state, said he had no recollection of being asked to stay behind after the March 22 meeting, according to the report.

Coats told Mueller’s investigators that Trump never asked him to speak with Comey about the FBI investigation. But other employees within Coats’ office had different recollections of how Coats described the meeting immediately after it occurred.

According to the report, senior staffer Michael Dempsey “said that Coats described the president’s comments as falling ‘somewhere between musing about hating the investigation’ and wanting Coats to ‘do something to stop it.’ Dempsey said Coats made it clear that he would not get involved with an ongoing FBI investigation.”

Officials informed of the step said an announcement was expected Monday, after a monthslong escalation in the administration’s rhetoric against Iran, its support for militia groups in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, as well as anti-Israel groups in the region and beyond.

It would be the first such designation by any American administration of an entire foreign government entity, although portions of the Guard, notably its elite Quds Force, have been targeted previously by the United States.

Two U.S. officials and a congressional aide confirmed the planned move. They were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, seemed to anticipate the designation, saying in a tweet Sunday aimed at President Donald Trump that Trump “should know better than to be conned into another US disaster.”

The designation, planning for which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes with sanctions, including freezes on assets the Guard may have in U.S. jurisdictions and a ban on Americans doing business with it or providing material support for its activities.

Although the Guard has broad control and influence over the Iranian economy, such penalties from the U.S. may have limited impact. The designation, however, could significantly complicate U.S. military and diplomatic work, notably in Iraq, where many Shiite militias and Iraqi political parties have close ties to the Guard.

In Lebanon, the designation could further restrict with whom U.S. officials can interact. The Guard has close ties to Hezbollah, which is part of the Lebanese government. Hezbollah is already designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. Its presence in Lebanon’s parliament and executive branch have forced the U.S. to avoid any contact with Hezbollah members even as the U.S. continues to provide assistance to and works with the Lebanese army.

Without exclusions or waivers to the designation, U.S. troops and diplomats could be barred from contact with Iraqi or Lebanese authorities who interact with Guard officials or surrogates.

The Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies have raised concerns about the impact of the designation if the move does not allow contact with foreign officials who may have met with or communicated with Guard personnel. Those concerns have in part dissuaded previous administrations from taking the step, which has been considered for more than a decade.

It was not immediately clear whether the designation would include such carve-outs.

In addition to those complications, American commanders are concerned that the designation may prompt Iran to retaliate against U.S. forces in the region, and those commanders plan to warn U.S. troops remaining in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere of that possibility, according to a third U.S. official. This official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Aside from Iraq, where some 5,200 American troops are stationed, and Syria, where some U.S. 2,000 troops remain, the U.S. 5th Fleet, which operates in the Persian Gulf from its base in Bahrain, and the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, are potentially at risk.

A similar warning is also expected from the State Department of possible Iranian retaliation against American interests, including embassies and consulates, and anti-American protests, the first two U.S. officials said. Similar alerts were issued at the start of the Iraq War in 2003 and more recently when the Trump administration announced it would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Despite the risks, Iran hard-liners on Capitol Hill, such as Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and elsewhere have long advocated for the designation. They say it will send an important message to Iran as well as deal it a further blow after the Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal and reimposed economic sanctions.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton have taken up the call and have in recent months spoken stridently about Iran and its “malign activities” in the region.

Pompeo has made clear in public comments that pressure on Tehran will only increase until it changes its behavior. Just last week, Pompeo’s special representative for Iran, Brian Hook, accused Iran and its proxies of being responsible for the death of 608 U.S. troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2011. He cited newly declassified Defense Department information for the claim, which is expected to be used in the justification for the Guard designation.

“Secretary Pompeo will continue to use all the tools at our disposal to press the regime to change its destructive policies for the benefit of peace in the region and for the sake of its own people, who are the longest-suffering victims of this regime,” Hook said, in an indication that new action is coming.

The department currently designates 60 groups, such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State and their various affiliates, Hezbollah and numerous militant Palestinian factions, as “foreign terrorist organizations.” But none of them is a state-run military.

Once a designation is announced by the secretary of state in coordination with the Treasury secretary, Congress has seven days to review it. If there are no objections, it then will take effect.

Associated Press reporter Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.

A non-binding resolution opposing Trump’s transgender ban passed 238-185. Every Democrat supported the resolution, while nearly every Republican voted against it. Five Republicans broke ranks and voted in favor: Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana, Will Hurd of Texas, John Katko of New York and Tom Reed of New York.

The Trump administration’s policy bars people who have undergone gender transition from enlisting. It also requires military personnel to serve as their biological gender unless they began a gender transition under less restrictive Obama administration rules. The policy is being challenged in court.

Rep. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass., the resolution’s sponsor, said Trump’s policy amounts to “targeted discrimination.” He said the House was voting to tell transgender people “that they cannot be banned from military service because of who they are.”

The top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas, opposed the resolution and said the vote attempted to politicize U.S. service members. Thornberry said because the resolution does not change law or policy it was a “messaging bill” that detracted from “serious issues that need to be discussed.”

Ahead of the vote many Democratic lawmakers placed transgender pride flags outside their offices on Capitol Hill, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who spoke from the floor in support of the resolution.

“There is no moral justification for this ban which violates every value of our American democracy,” Pelosi said Thursday.

Under the Obama administration, the Pentagon announced that transgender people already serving in the military would be allowed to serve openly. Trump reversed that policy beginning in 2017 with a tweet that the government would not allow “Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.”

An estimated 14,700 troops on active duty and in the Reserves identify as transgender, but not all seek treatment. Since July 2016, more than 1,500 service members were diagnosed with gender dysphoria; as of Feb. 1, there were 1,071 currently serving. The Pentagon says it has spent about $8 million on transgender care since 2016. The military’s annual health care budget tops $50 billion.

All four service chiefs told Congress last year that they had seen no discipline, morale or unit readiness problems with transgender troops serving openly in the military. But they also acknowledged that some commanders were spending a lot of time with transgender individuals who were working through medical requirements and other transition issues.

Speaking from the House floor ahead of the vote, Armed Services Chair Adam Smith, D-Wash., said the Trump administration policy is “primarily based on ignorance and bias against the transgender community.”

“We have the best military in the world,” Smith said. “We need highly qualified people to serve and to single out a particular group — to discriminate against them and to say they cannot serve — is bad for national security.”

U.S.-backed Syrian fighters have custody of nearly 1,000 suspected ISIS fighters who the State Department said should be sent back to their home countries and prosecuted. The Syrian fighters have warned they may not be able to continue to hold the ISIS fighters after the withdrawal of American forces from Syria ordered by President Donald Trump in December.

If they can’t be repatriated, though, the detention center on the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be used to hold them “where lawful and appropriate,” the State Department said Thursday.

“The Administration’s National Strategy for Counterterrorism makes very clear that Law of Armed Conflict detention, including at Guantanamo, remains an important and effective counterterrorism tool,” it said in a statement to The Associated Press in response to questions about the prisoners.

Trump had said in his first State of the Union last year that he would use Guantanamo “in many cases” to detain prisoners as part of the fight against Islamic State and al-Qaida. As a candidate, when asked about what he would do with the controversial detention center, he said he would “load it up with some bad dudes.”

But the administration has not added any prisoners to the detention center that President Barack Obama sought to close and officials say that sending suspected Islamic State fighters back to their homelands remains the preferred choice.

“Repatriating foreign terrorist fighters to their countries of origin and ensuring they are prosecuted and detained is the best solution to prevent them from returning to the battlefield,” the State Department said.

A U.S. official, said Guantanamo is the “option of last resort.” The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. has identified about 50 people among the more than 900 held by Syrian forces as “high value” suspects that could be transported to Guantanamo if they are not repatriated.

Sending Islamic State prisoners to Guantanamo would open up new legal challenges, according to experts.

The U.S. is allowed to detain al-Qaida and “associated forces” at Guantanamo under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force. But whether Islamic State group fighters meets that criteria is an untested question, said Robert Chesney, a national security law professor at the University of Texas.

“No court has ever once had the case and the executive branch for many years has really not wanted the court to answer that question,” Chesney said.

The U.S. began holding prisoners suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban in January 2002, drawing intense international criticism for holding men indefinitely without charge amid reports of mistreatment at the isolated base on the southeastern tip of Cuba.

Guantanamo held nearly 700 prisoners at its peak in the summer of 2003. Amid legal challenges and international pressure, more than 500 were released under President George W. Bush. Obama viewed the detention center as a waste of money that damaged America’s reputation and ordered it closed but was blocked by Congress.

There are now 40 prisoners held, including nine who have been charged and are facing trial by military commission in proceedings that have dragged on for years.

From a purely practical standpoint, U.S. military officials have said they could accommodate additional prisoners at the base.

The forces overseeing Guantanamo prison say the prison can hold 40 more people “with no additional staffing” and the facility could accommodate 200 more inmates total, “with minimal adjustments to current infrastructure and manpower,” said Navy Cdr. Adam Bashaw, a spokesman for the military task force that runs the detention center.

The National Intelligence Strategy report, issued every four years, also singles out such potential threats as North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, the growing cyber capabilities of U.S. adversaries and global political instability.

The report, which sets out the priorities for the various agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, notes that the United States “faces an increasingly complex and uncertain world in which threats are becoming ever more diverse and interconnected.”

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said in a letter accompanying the report that the U.S. agencies must adapt to respond to what he calls a “turbulent and complex” environment.

“We face significant changes in the domestic and global environment,” Coats said. “We must be ready to meet the 21st century challenges and to recognize emerging threats and opportunities.”

He said the intelligence community must improve cooperation among member agencies and foster more innovation. He also said agencies must do more to increase transparency to raise public trust in their work.

The report does not rank the threats, but the first section is devoted to the threat posed by “traditional adversaries” seeking to take advantage of the weakening of the post-World War II international order and increasingly isolationist tendencies in the West. “Russian efforts to increase its influence and authority are likely to continue and may conflict with U.S. goals and priorities in multiple regions,” it says.

Coats also addressed his staff at the strategy’s rollout, pledging that the intelligence community would not be dissuaded from “seeking the truth, and when we find the truth, speaking the truth.”

Coats said the 17-agency intelligence community plans to operate with greater transparency to earn and uphold the trust of policy makers and the American people.

Senior Intelligence officials at the strategy’s unveiling did not address statements from President Donald Trump dismissing intelligence findings. Trump has expressed disregard for key intelligence findings regarding Russian influence in the 2016 election and Saudi Arabia’s role in the killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi.

Speaking broadly, one senior director of national intelligence official said the push for greater transparency is part of an effort to restore trust with the American people following Edward Snowden’s 2013 leak of classified U.S. material about America’s surveillance programs. Senior intelligence officials briefed journalists at the strategy’s u

nveiling on condition they not be cited by name.

The 2019 National Intelligence Strategy report also discusses China’s modernization of its military and pursuit of “predominance” in the Pacific region.

The strategy notes that both China and Russia continue to pursue anti-satellite weapons to weaken the U.S. military and security. It also says the threat from hacking is growing as more adversaries acquire the technology to interfere with U.S. computer systems.

A senior administration official said Tuesday that resolving the fate of these prisoners is a top priority as the government lays the groundwork with allies to comply with President Donald Trump’s Dec. 19 order to withdraw the 2,000 American troops from Syria, where they have been working alongside the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces to fight the Islamic State group since 2015.

But there are no easy answers. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said releasing the fighters, among them Europeans and some U.S. citizens, would be “unacceptable” since they could simply rejoin the remnants of Islamic State fighters in Syria or elsewhere.

“This matters because SDF holds hundreds of IS fighters, including many European citizens, and they might go free if no solution is found,” said Bobby Chesney, a national security law expert at the University of Texas.

European nations have been reluctant to take back citizens with ties to the Islamic State, not wanting the legal challenge of prosecuting them or the potential security risk if they are released.

And moving former fighters to the United States poses some of the same challenges the U.S. has faced with men detained at the military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including whether it’s feasible to prosecute militants captured on the battlefields of northern Syria, according to experts.

“It’s one thing for the government to be very confident that an individual joined or tried to join ISIS. And sometimes it’s still another thing for the government to be able to mount confidently a criminal prosecution against that individual,” said Joshua Geltzer, a senior counterterrorism official under President Barack Obama.

Meanwhile, the prisoner problem is only growing worse.

On Sunday, the Syrian Democratic Forces announced the capture of five fighters, including two U.S. citizens, one of whom has been identified as a former school teacher from Houston.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just began a tour of eight Middle Eastern nations to discuss the withdrawal of the American troops. National security adviser John Bolton returned Tuesday from a meeting in Turkey, where he was seeking a guarantee of safety for the Kurdish fighters who have fought alongside U.S. troops against the Islamic State.

There are fears that the U.S. withdrawal will leave a door open for Turkey to assault the U.S.-allied SDF fighters. Turkey views them as part of a terrorist group linked to an insurgency within its own borders. SDF commanders have warned that they will be unable to hold the 700 prisoners if Turkish forces invade Syria following a U.S. withdrawal.

Administration officials so far do not have a plan for what to do with the prisoners, according to a separate U.S. official, who said that few countries have been willing to accept any of their captured citizens. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to disclose the information publicly.

In a recent case of an American suspected of ISIS membership, U.S. officials wrestled for more than a year, never charged him and then ultimately released him in Bahrain.

The problem has been further complicated by conflicting reports of Trump’s timeline for recalling the 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria. When he made his surprise announcement of the withdrawal three weeks ago, Trump said he wanted to complete it quickly. His abrupt decision led to the resignations of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the global coalition to defeat ISIS.

More recently, Trump and other administration officials have insisted they favor an orderly pullout. The senior administration official said the U.S. will defeat remaining ISIS fighters on the way out to prevent a resurgence and that the U.S. will oppose any mistreatment of opposition forces, such as the SDF, that fought with the United States against ISIS.

“These questions are hard enough, if you know the timeline on which you’re making them — if you know what the U.S. involvement will or won’t be over that timeline,” Geltzer said.

One of the foreign fighters recently captured is Warren Christopher Clark, a former substitute schoolteacher from Houston, Texas, who was first identified by George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. Researchers spent months investigating to confirm his identity through multiple sources. The program has identified more than 73 Americans, by their legal names, who are known to have joined jihadist groups.

“Clark is one of several dozen Americans to join the Islamic State out of the around 295 whom intelligence officials claim have traveled or attempted to travel to Syria and Iraq to join the terrorist group,” according to Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism.

Clark was captured along with four other foreign jihadists — two from Pakistan, one from Ireland and a fourth man, Zaid Abed al-Hamid, who also is believed to be from the United States, although that has not been confirmed.

In a letter to ISIS that was obtained by the researchers, Clark submitted a resume noting that he had a bachelor’s degree from the University of Houston, had worked as a substitute teacher at the Fort Bend Independent School District in Sugar Land, Texas, and had done teaching stints in Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

“Dear Director, I am looking to get a position teaching English to students in the Islamic State,” he wrote to the group in an accompanying cover letter. “Teaching has given me the opportunity to work with people from diverse cultural backgrounds and learning capabilities.”

Associated Press writer Zeke Miller contributed to this report.