James Foley's Parents Speak Out

BAGHDAD/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Islamic State's beheading of a U.S. journalist and its threat to "destroy the American cross" suggests it has gained enough confidence seizing large areas of Iraq and Syria to take aim at American targets despite the risks.

On Tuesday night, Islamic State released a video of its fighters beheading James Foley, who was kidnapped in Syria nearly two years ago. The black-clad executioner, who spoke English with a British accent, also produced another American journalist and said his fate depends on President  Obama's next move.

Islamic State had previously seemed focused on proclaiming a caliphate in the parts of Iraq and Syria it controls, marching on Baghdad and redrawing the map of the Middle East. But in several telephone conversations with a Reuters reporter over the past few months, Islamic State fighters had indicated that their leader, Iraqi Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had several surprises in store for the West. They hinted that attacks on American interests or even U.S. soil were possible through sleeper cells in Europe and the United States.“The West are idiots and fools. They think we are waiting for them to give us visas to go and attack them or that we will attack with our beards or even Islamic outfits," said one.

"They think they can distinguish us these days – they are fools, and, more than that, they don’t know we can play their game in intelligence. They infiltrated us with those who pretend to be Muslims and we have also penetrated them with those who look like them."

Another Islamic State militant said the group had practical reasons for taking on the United States.

“The stronger the war against the States gets, the better this will help hesitant brothers to join us.

America will send its rockets, and we will send our bombs. Our land will not be attacked while their land is safe.”

Unlike al Qaeda, Islamic State did not at first seem bent on spectacular attacks on the West: it used fear to tighten its grip on the towns it seized in northern Iraq after facing little resistance from the U.S.-trained Iraqi army and Kurdish peshmerga fighters who held parts of the area.

But a series of videos it released recently, culminating with the one that showed Foley's death, resembled footage that al-Qaeda produced while killing U.S. soldiers, beheading Americans and slaughtering Shi'ites during the U.S. occupation.