“The threat is real. It’s acute. It’s persistent. And that’s what we’re focusing on with all the tools in our arsenal,” Sullivan told CNN’s Brianna Keilar on Sunday’s “State of the Union.”
SIS-K is a branch of the terrorist group that first emerged in Syria and Iraq. Although affiliates share an ideology and tactics, the depth of their relationship in terms of organization, command, and control has never been fully established.
Sullivan said U.S. commanders on the ground “have a wide variety of capabilities they are using to defend the airfield against a potential terrorist attack” and the United States is working with the intelligence community to determine d ‘where a potential attack could originate.
“It’s something we’re giving top priority to stopping or interrupting, and we’ll do everything we can while we’re on the ground so that this doesn’t happen, but we take it absolutely deadly seriously,” he said. .
President Joe Biden will have to receive an update from his national security team in Afghanistan later Sunday morning and is expected to address developments in comments on Sunday afternoon.
In “State of the Union,” Sullivan was unable to provide an exact number of how many Americans and legal permanent residents of the United States are currently in Afghanistan, but counted “several thousand.”
“We are working hard to organize groups of Americans, take them to the air base, get them on flights and get them out of the country,” he said, citing an “operational and logistical challenge in a risky and dynamic environment.”
In the past 24 hours, more than 7,500 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan by U.S. military aircraft or flights facilitated by the United States through private organizations and collaborations with other countries, according to Sullivan.
This story has been updated.
CNN’s Barbara Starr, Oren Liebermann, Ellie Kaufman and Nicole Gaouette contributed to this report.