President Barack Obama will deliver a prime time address from the Oval Office on Sunday, the White House announced, where he is expected to discuss his administration's strategy for confronting the threat posed by the radical group Islamic State (ISIS), as well as ongoing counter-terror efforts.
In the wake of the massacre in San Bernardino—which the FBI is now formally investigating as an incident of domestic terrorism—Obama will talk about "the steps our government is taking to fulfill his highest priority: keeping the American people safe," the White House said in a statement.
The speech will take place at 8pm ET., and comes four days after American born Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife laid siege to a holiday party for local government workers in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people and wounding more than a dozen. The two were later killed in a shootout with authorities.
Read More San Bernardino killers were our followers, ISIS says
The incident has renewed concerns about homegrown terror, and the ability of Islamic extremist elements to create havoc on U.S. soil. In a Saturday radio address, ISIS claimed both Farook and his wife as "followers," but stopped short of formally claiming responsibility for the chaos in San Bernardino.
Amid growing criticism of his strategy against ISIS, or ISIL, Obama also plans to "reiterate his firm conviction that ISIL will be destroyed and that the United States must draw upon our values...to prevail over terrorist groups that use violence to advance a destructive ideology."
Days after the president insisted in an interview that ISIS was "contained", a cell pulled off a coordinated attack in Paris that left more than 100 people dead and hundreds more injured. Critics contend that Obama —who once dismissed ISIS as 'junior varsity'—has yet to come up with a workable strategy that neutralizes the threat posed by the terror group.
Prime time Oval Office addresses are normally reserved by presidents to deliver messages in times of national crisis, or for major events. Sunday will be Obama's third such speech: his last was in 2010, at the end of combat operations in Iraq.
--Reuters contributed to this story.
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