It’s unclear how well non-military means in Iraq and Syria will diminish the revenue base for the Islamic State, a scholar from RAND Corp. testified. Members of the House Committee on Financial Services heard testimony on oil revenue for the Sunni-led terrorism group in control over parts of Iraq and Syria. At the height of its campaign , IS controlled as many as seven oil fields and was said to be generating as much as $2 million per day in oil revenue. David S. Cohen, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the Department of the Treasury, testified the group is “probably now earning several million dollars per week” from smuggled oil. Patrick Johnson , a counter-terrorism specialist at RAND Corp., testified it was difficult to understand the full complexity of the IS smuggling ring in the region. “Although some information exists on the […]