# The claim that Israel and the United States secretly created ISIS is a debunked conspiracy theory rooted in a fabricated hoax

**Verdict: Contradicted.** This is a false conspiracy theory, and its most viral form rests on an invented document. The best-known version claims that leaked Edward Snowden files prove Israel's Mossad and Anglo-American intelligence built ISIS in a plot codenamed “Hornet's Nest.” PolitiFact traced that story to a fabricated post that spread through Middle Eastern outlets and fake-news sites, and rated it “Pants on Fire.” No such document exists in Snowden's archive; the journalists who hold it, and Snowden's own lawyer, said so. The real, documented lineage of the Islamic State runs through al-Qaeda in Iraq, from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, not through Tel Aviv or Washington. The theory recurs after major terror attacks and frequently carries an antisemitic subtext, reworking the acronym into “Israeli Secret Intelligence Service” and recycling the old myth of hidden Jewish control. It is reported here as a debunked hoax, never as fact.

Category: Secret Societies & Power · Era: 2010s · First circulated: The general “the West created ISIS” idea circulated from 2014 as the group seized territory in Iraq and Syria; the specific “Snowden documents prove Israel and the US built ISIS” hoax broke in July 2014 from a fabricated online post and was amplified by Iranian state media, Bahrain's Gulf Daily News, and conspiracy sites · Believed by: Fringe but persistent. The claim recurs across parts of the Middle East, on English-language conspiracy networks, and on social media after terror attacks; the ADL recorded tens of thousands of “Israel is ISIS” posts on X in a single weekend after the 2024 Moscow concert-hall massacre.
URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/israel-created-isis

## Summary
As the Islamic State overran swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014, a family of conspiracy theories claimed the group was not a jihadist movement at all but a Western creation. The most viral version asserted that leaked Edward Snowden documents proved Israel's Mossad, working with British and American intelligence, had engineered ISIS in an operation called “Hornet's Nest.” Fact-checkers traced the story to a fabricated post with no basis in Snowden's actual archive; the reporters who hold those files and Snowden's lawyer confirmed no such document exists. This file treats the theory as what it is: a debunked hoax that grafts a fake secret document onto a real, painful conflict. It separates the documented origins of ISIS as an al-Qaeda offshoot from the false claim of an Israeli-American plot, and names the antisemitic tropes the theory often carries.

## The claim
That the Islamic State was not an organic jihadist insurgency but a covert product of Israeli and American intelligence, supposedly proven by leaked Snowden documents describing a plot to lure extremists into a single “hornet's nest” to serve Israeli and Western interests, and, in the theory's harder edge, that the very name ISIS stands for “Israeli Secret Intelligence Service.”

## Origin and timeline
- 1999-2004: The organization that becomes ISIS is founded by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad. In October 2004 Zarqawi pledges allegiance to Osama bin Laden, and the group becomes known as al-Qaeda in Iraq. This documented lineage, years before any alleged plot, is the group's real starting point.
- 2006-2013: After Zarqawi is killed in a 2006 US airstrike, the group rebrands as the Islamic State of Iraq, later led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In April 2013 it expands into Syria's civil war as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS).
- 2014-02: Al-Qaeda's central leadership, under Ayman al-Zawahiri, publicly disowns ISIS after a bitter split with its Syrian affiliate. The break is documented in the groups' own statements, a fact hard to square with any theory of unified Western control.
- 2014-06: ISIS captures Mosul and declares a “caliphate.” Its sudden battlefield success, and the failure of US-trained Iraqi forces to stop it, fuel a wave of “who really made this happen” speculation across the region and online.
- 2014-07-06: A fabricated post, circulated first through an Arabic-language blog, claims Snowden leaked documents showing Mossad and Anglo-American intelligence created ISIS in a plot codenamed “Hornet's Nest.” No source, document image, or interview is ever produced.
- 2014-07-08: Iran's state outlets Fars and IRNA, Bahrain's Gulf Daily News, and Western conspiracy sites including InfoWars report the fabricated “Hornet's Nest” story as fact, giving it a veneer of news-agency credibility and pushing it worldwide.
- 2014-08: Journalists with access to the Snowden archive, along with his ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner, publicly refute the story; nothing resembling “Hornet's Nest” exists in the leaked files. On 19 August 2014, PolitiFact rates the claim “Pants on Fire.”
- 2024-03: After ISIS claims the Crocus City Hall massacre near Moscow, the “Israel is ISIS” theory resurges. The ADL records more than 59,000 mentions of “Israeli secret intelligence service” or “Israel is ISIS” on X over a single weekend, showing how the hoax is recycled onto each new atrocity.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: Leaked Snowden documents prove Israel and Western intelligence created ISIS in a plot called “Hornet's Nest.”
  Evidence: No such document exists. The claim was traced by PolitiFact to a fabricated online post that produced no file, no image, and no verifiable interview. The journalists who actually hold and have reported on Snowden's archive found nothing resembling a “Hornet's Nest” operation, and Snowden's ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner rejected the story. PolitiFact rated it “Pants on Fire.” A claim whose entire evidentiary basis is an invented document is not evidence of anything.
- Claim: ISIS appeared out of nowhere, which shows a hidden hand built it.
  Evidence: ISIS did not appear out of nowhere. Its documented history runs back to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group in the early 2000s, through al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq, and finally Baghdadi's ISIL. Historians and outlets from Britannica to the Wilson Center trace this fifteen-year lineage in the open record. The group's rise is explained by the Iraq war's aftermath, sectarian grievance, and the Syrian civil war, not by a secret founding.
- Claim: The name ISIS really stands for “Israeli Secret Intelligence Service.”
  Evidence: This is a backronym invented to smear. ISIS is an English acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (or the Levant); in Arabic the group is known as Da'esh, from its Arabic name. The Israeli foreign intelligence service is the Mossad, whose Hebrew name has no connection to the word. Reworking the acronym into “Israeli Secret Intelligence Service” is a rhetorical trick, and the ADL documents it as an explicitly antisemitic talking point.
- Claim: Al-Qaeda and ISIS are one Western-run network, so the plot holds together.
  Evidence: The two groups violently split. In February 2014 al-Qaeda's leadership formally disowned ISIS after a public feud with its Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front, and the rivalry produced years of infighting and bloodshed between the factions. A single controlling hand in Tel Aviv or Washington cannot explain jihadist organizations fighting and excommunicating one another in their own published statements.
- Claim: ISIS mostly killed Muslims and attacked enemies of Israel, which proves who benefits.
  Evidence: This inverts the record. ISIS killed Muslims in overwhelming numbers, but it also carried out or inspired attacks in Europe, the United States, and Russia, bombed Shia and Sunni civilians alike, and repeatedly threatened Israel in its own propaganda. “Who benefits” is not proof of authorship; it is a rhetorical move that can be pointed at any party. The documented pattern of ISIS violence fits a millenarian jihadist project, not a covert asset serving Israeli aims.
- Claim: Even mainstream figures said the US “created” ISIS, so the theory is credible.
  Evidence: This conflates two very different statements. Analysts and some politicians have argued that the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the disbanding of its army created the chaos in which ISIS grew, a serious and debatable claim about unintended consequences. That is categorically different from the conspiracy theory that intelligence agencies deliberately built and ran ISIS as a secret weapon. The hoax trades on the first, defensible idea to smuggle in the second, fabricated one.
- Claim: Western powers armed Syrian rebels, so they must have armed ISIS.
  Evidence: Support for some anti-Assad rebel factions is documented, and weapons did leak across a chaotic battlefield, a real and reported problem. But leakage and battlefield capture are not a founding, and EUvsDisinfo catalogs the broader “the West created and controls ISIS” narrative as recurring, evidence-free disinformation, much of it pushed by pro-Kremlin and Iranian state media to discredit Western policy. Messy proxy conflict is real; a deliberate Israeli-American creation of ISIS is not.

## Why people believe it
- It sits on top of real grievances. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, mass civilian death, and Western meddling in the region are genuine and bitterly remembered, so a story that blames outside powers for the horror of ISIS lands on ground already primed to believe it.
- A fake document feels like proof. Attaching the claim to Edward Snowden, a real whistleblower who exposed genuine secret programs, borrows his credibility. “Leaked documents show” is a powerful phrase, and most people never check whether the document exists.
- It offers a tidy villain for an unbearable event. Accepting that a death cult arose from within the region's own politics is harder than believing a hidden foreign hand engineered it. Conspiracy gives the chaos an author and a purpose.
- It plugs into an older, darker template. The claim that Jews or Israel secretly orchestrate world catastrophes is a centuries-old antisemitic trope, and the “Israel created ISIS” story slots neatly into it, which is part of why it spreads so fast after each new attack.

## Open questions
- Why does the hoax keep coming back? Each major ISIS-linked atrocity, from Paris to Moscow, triggers a fresh wave of “Israel is ISIS” posts. The recurring pattern is a story about disinformation dynamics and antisemitism, not an open question about ISIS's actual origins, which are settled.
- Who benefits from spreading it? Researchers point to state actors, chiefly Iranian and pro-Kremlin outlets, that gain by portraying Western and Israeli policy as the true source of terrorism. Tracking that amplification is the live question, not whether the underlying claim is true.
- How did a real invasion's consequences get twisted into a fake plot? The legitimate debate over how the Iraq war enabled ISIS is continually hijacked to launder the fabricated “intelligence agencies built it” version. Keeping those two ideas apart is an ongoing challenge for honest coverage.
- How much of ISIS's own record has to be ignored to sustain the theory? The group's published leadership disputes, its excommunication by al-Qaeda, and its attacks on Western and Russian targets all have to be waved away. What sustains belief despite that documented record is a question about psychology, not evidence.

## Sources
- Bloggers: Edward Snowden leaked NSA documents show U.S., Israel created Islamic State, PolitiFact (2014): https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/aug/19/blog-posting/edward-snowden-leaked-nsa-documents-show-us-israel/
- Fact-checking claims about the Islamic State, Poynter (2014): https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2014/fact-checking-claims-about-the-islamic-state/
- “Israel is ISIS” and other lies about the Crocus City Hall terror attack, Anti-Defamation League (ADL) (2024): https://www.adl.org/resources/article/israel-isis-and-other-lies-about-crocus-city-hall-terror-attack
- Deadly New Orleans Attack Fuels Conspiracy Theories About Immigrants, Israel, Anti-Defamation League (ADL) (2025): https://www.adl.org/resources/article/deadly-new-orleans-attack-fuels-conspiracy-theories-about-immigrants-israel
- Disinfo: US is going to use ISIS for guerrilla and subversive activities, EUvsDisinfo (EU East StratCom Task Force): https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/us-is-going-to-use-isis-for-guerrilla-and-subversive-activities/
- America created the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria? Meet the ISIS 'truthers', The Week (2014): https://theweek.com/articles/444103/america-created-islamic-state-iraq-syria-meet-isis-truthers
- Timeline: the Rise, Spread, and Fall of the Islamic State, Wilson Center: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/timeline-the-rise-spread-and-fall-the-islamic-state
- From Al Qaeda in Iraq to ISIS, From al Zarqawi to al Baghdadi, Lawfare (2015): https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/al-qaeda-iraq-isis-al-zarqawi-al-baghdadi
- Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS): History, Terrorism, Definition, and Facts, Encyclopaedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Islamic-State-in-Iraq-and-the-Levant
- ISIS Is an American Plot to Destabilize the Region, says Iran, TIME (2014): https://time.com/2992269/isis-is-an-american-plot-says-iran/

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