Members of Iran's Basij Force march (file)
Members of Iran's Basij Force march (file)Reuters

Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi, Commander of Iran’s Basij (volunteer) Force, on Thursday aired a whopper of a conspiracy theory, claiming that Israel and the US - which Iran just signed a nuclear deal with - are behind Islamic State (ISIS).

Naqdi, who just this Tuesday said the nuclear deal makes Iranians hate America "100 times more" and in March said "wiping Israel off the map is not up for negotiation," was quoted by the semi-official Fars News Agency in a message to the Iraqi public.

"The ISIL's theorization and ideology production center is in Haifa and its field operations room in the region is the US embassy in Baghdad," Naqdi claimed, using an alternate acronym for the Sunni ISIS that Shi'ite Iran has been fighting - as has the US.

But that's not all; he claimed the US and Israel had created ISIS as a "successor to their former agent in the region Saddam Hussein," indicating the Iraqi dictator who was toppled by none other than the US.

This isn't the first time Naqdi has accused the US and Israel of creating ISIS.

Back in 2014, Fars reports he told a crowd of thousands of Basij troops that "the criminal US created, equipped and armed the ISIL terrorist group with the help of the wicked Britain and the child-killing Zionist regime as well the petrodollars of oil-rich countries and they ordered it (ISIS) to carry out crimes and large-scale massacre of Shi'ites and Sunnis and disrupt their tranquility on the pretext of a sectarian Sunni war on Shi'ites."

According to Naqdi, the US created ISIS to "introduce a tainted image of Islam" through acts of brutal savagery in executions and the murder of women and children - even as Iranian-backed terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah are in fact guilty of committing similar acts.

Iran has increasingly shown hostility towards the US despite the deal, with an aide to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei saying Tuesday that Iran won't let international inspectors visit its covert military sites such as Parchin, where Iran's illicit nuclear weapons testing is thought to be occurring.

Earlier on Tuesday US Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged for the first time that Iran's vows to defy the US are "disturbing."