All these moves, along with others in areas north of Baghdad in Diyala, were designed to confuse the plans to liberate Tikrit and Mosul. IS knows full well that the psychological preparation for the liberation of Mosul — an important and complex strategic target — intensified at the beginning of 2015.
Over the past two months, US leaders have stepped up their remarks about the approach of the battle to liberate Mosul and provided details as to the time of this operation, before US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter denied these details.
The popular mobilization forces also set a time frame for the Tikrit liberation operation. Over the past several weeks, news circulated on how groups of the popular mobilization forces and the army had indeed approached Tikrit to start the liberation process.
IS is generally aware of the potential of its enemies. In past months, it has demonstrated a kind of realism on the battlefield. For example, when controlling certain areas — like in Diyala, Jalawla, Saadia and Muqdadiyah — became impossible due to the size of the attacking forces, it gradually backed down and chose to carry out distracting attacks.
Up until this day, IS still retains the major cities it occupied in June 2014, namely Mosul, Tikrit, Hawija, Qaim and parts of Ramadi, in addition to the city of Fallujah, which it occupied in January 2014. However, the Iraqi army, peshmerga and popular mobilization forces have defeated IS in dozens of villages along these cities' borders.
IS did not back down, since it sought to prove that it was planning for a long presence in the cities, yet it began to sense that the Iraqi and international efforts to restore these cities were serious.
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