The London Express (5/22/15) unsubtly juxtaposed ISIS militants with an atomic explosion.
This past weekend, several media outlets ran a story about how ISIS is seeking a nuclear weapon:
ISIS Claims It Could Buy Its First Nuclear Weapon From Pakistan Within a Year
—International Business Times
ISIS to Smuggle Its First Nuclear Weapon From Pakistan, Mulls Attack on US: Report
—Economic Times
ISIS Boasts It ‘Could Buy First Nuclear Weapon in Less Than 12 Months’
—Daily Mirror
John Cantlie Claims ‘Infinitely’ Greater Threat of Nuclear Attack on US
—The Telegraph
These “reports” are based entirely on a throwaway line from hostage-cum-ISIS spokesperson John Cantlie in an “op-ed” in the ISIS magazine Dabiq a few days ago. As IBTreported:
“Let me throw a hypothetical operation onto the table,” [Cantile] continues. “The Islamic State has billions of dollars in the bank, so they call on their wilāyah in Pakistan to purchase a nuclear device through weapons dealers with links to corrupt officials in the region.”
It admits that such a scenario is “far-fetched” but warns: “It’s the sum of all fears for Western intelligence agencies and it’s infinitely more possible today than it was just one year ago.”
This “hypothetical operation” was a “far-fetched” scenario—but the meme, naturally, soon spread to popular right-wing media: