WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies and the Pentagon are struggling to determine how difficult it will be to retake Mosul, the Islamic State’s de facto capital in Iraq, as planning intensifies for a battle that is becoming a major test of the Obama administration’s strategy to stop the spread of the terrorist group in the Middle East.
The assessment will be pivotal in driving important policy and military decisions that President Obama will need to make in the coming weeks, including whether the Pentagon will need to deploy teams of American ground forces to call in allied airstrikes and advise Iraqi troops on the battlefield on the challenges of urban warfare.
Reclaiming Mosul, which has a population of more than one million people and is Iraq’s second-largest city, will require 20,000 to 25,000 Iraqi and Kurdish forces to clear it block by block, with many of the streets and buildings likely rigged with explosives, American officials said. The battle is planned for as early as April.
The city is being held by 1,000 to 2,000 Islamic State militants, according to United States military estimates. It sits astride one of the major infiltration routes that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has used to ferry troops and supplies into northern Iraq from Syria.
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The plan calls for introducing a stabilizing force that would be composed of former Mosul police officers and Sunni tribal fighters. But it is unclear how synchronized this effort will be.
“It may well be the Iraqi forces are ready to assault Mosul in a couple of months,” said one European military officer who had been briefed on some of the battle planning. “But what comes next, who holds the ground taken, that could be just as difficult.”
Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.
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