Vladimir Putin Aide Claims ISIS Trained by Israel’s Mossad Agents in Syria

This undated image posted online and made available on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2014 by Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, an anti-Islamic State group organization, shows children at an Islamic State group training camp in Raqqa, Syria. The image has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting. Across the vast region in Syria and Iraq that is part of the Islamic State group's self-declared caliphate, children are being inculcated with the extremist group's radical and violent interpretation of Shariah law. (AP Photo/Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently)

The connection between Islamic State and Mossad has been brought up once again--this time by a Russian official.

Alexander Prokhanov, a top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, accused Israel and the United States of training members of the terrorist group known as ISIS. Specifically, he said agents with Israeli intelligence agency Mossad were the ones who were primarily responsible.

“ISIS is a tool at the hands of the United States. They tell the Europeans that if we (the Americans) do not intervene, ISIS will cause you harm,” he told Iranian state-run media, per the Jerusalem Post. “They launched their first terror attack against us just a few days back in Chechnya,” he said.

Armed assailants attacked a police post and shot up a building in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, killing 10 officers.

Iranian state-run media and officials claimed in the past that members of ISIS, including leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, were trained by Mossad in tandem with the CIA and British intelligence agents.

A former Iranian minister of intelligence, Heydar Moslehi, said in mid-October that ISIS was created via the “the triangle of Mossad, MI6, and the CIA,” according to a Radio Free Europe report citing Iran’s state-run Fars News.

“The coalition certainly does not want to destroy IS because it needs to use IS for most of its Satanic goals,” Moslehi claimed.

Both Iran and the US oppose ISIS. However, some Iranian officials, including the supreme leader and the military, oppose the US-led coalition against the terror group.

However, Iran recently joined the fight against ISIS. According to Reuters and other outlets, Iran has carried out airstrikes on ISIS targets with old F-4 Phantom warplanes.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Ebrahim Rahimpour, confirmed the airstrikes with The Guardian a few days later, saying it was done as a request from the Iraqi government. He stressed Iran is not joining the US-led coalition.

“In this matter, we did not have any coordination with the Americans. We have coordinated only with the Iraqi government,” Rahimpour told the Guardian.