Mohammad Ali Ahmad, a newspaper vendor in Baghdad, expressed shock at some people’s belief that the United States will eliminate the Islamic State (IS). During a phone interview with Al-Monitor, Ahmad said that the United States had created IS and would not allow it to be destroyed. This belief is widespread among many Iraqis and other Arabs and is being reinforced by Iraqi and Arab media, which claim that the CIA was behind IS' establishment.

It is not only average Iraqi citizens who believe this, but politicians and journalists as well. A case in point is a website close to former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki publishing a detailed article about a US-led conspiracy to create IS to deal blows to any government opposing Israel’s global policies and its own. Alforat satellite television, affiliated with the Islamic Supreme Council and opposed to Maliki’s politics, is on the same page. Since July 2014, it has been broadcasting stories claiming that the United States formed IS to weaken certain states and to gain control over them.

Some note what they claim to be a clear contradiction in the United States' proclaimed stance toward IS. On the one hand, they see it fighting IS on the ground, but on the other hand, supplying it with arms. This is largely based on the October 2014 incident in which the US-led international coalition against IS airdropped weapons to Kurdish peshmerga and one of the loads fell into IS hands. The US Department of Defense acknowledged the incident, saying that the wind likely blew the delivery off course. On Feb. 4, Maliki’s State of Law Coalition called on the parliament to launch an investigation into alleged repeated US arms supply to IS.

In a phone interview from Diwaniyah, Hamza Fadel Youcef, professor of modern literary criticism at al-Qadisiyyah University, told Al-Monitor of a theory popular in his city involving an alleged Operation Hornet’s Nest undertaken by the international coalition. Youcef explained, “People believe that the US strikes IS in a certain region to eliminate its militants and allows the Shiite popular mobilization forces to enter the area. Then, the United States encourages IS to occupy the region again to eliminate the Shiite militants only to strike IS once again. Such a scenario ultimately leads to killing the biggest number of militants from both sides.”