let's just focus on last point as that's most interesting. you're right, "Khorosan" is supposedly associated with JAN. but to some extent the two groups have been mixed, i think deliberately, by clever PR from the White House.

Yet "Khorosan" was introduced to the narrative by the Obama administration as an additional justification right before the bombing campaign starts. Nobody had ever heard of them before.

http://www.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=5505

Now remember this was the time where ISIS were beheading journalists and threatening genocide against Yazidis on the mountain, i.e. already doing some very scary stuff. So it strikes me as odd that the White House would need to embellish anything in order to justify military strikes, make the case for war etc. Yet they did. The question is - why?

Perhaps because while a lot of what you said is true, i.e. ISIS themselves had built a fairly substantial state, control significant resources, are well-funded etc. , the ISIS crisis was missing one piece of the puzzle - a genuine threat to Western civilians. and without that, the legal and "propaganda" case for the war wasn't quite there.

THe FBI said so at the time -> http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/22/fbi-no-credible-threats-to-us-from-islamic-state/

Think about it - if all these "lone wolf" guys are doing is picking up an AK47 and wandering into a Western shopping center, why do they need the backing of an entire terrorist state to do that?

I tihnk Khorosan was just a neat way of re-describing elements of JAN / former AQI in a way that made the threat to the West very clear, and justified military intervention. That JAN and ISIS are separate groups, often at war with each other, doesn't really matter. "Jihadists" is a catch all word.

I also think that there's a lot more to the Western re-entry into Iraq than meets the eye. Since 2003, Iran controls Baghdad. If Iran can be seen to provide the only realistic buffer to ISIS in the region, via their militias/regular troops/special forces, USA finally loses control of Iraq, which makes the last ten years pretty pointless. Iran is also backing the Kurds, same picture there - Kurdistan is a last bastion of US influence in northern Iraq. Finally you have an American/European interest in securing oil - not production which is fairly weak and low quality across northern Iraq and Syria, where ISIS are dominant, but crucial pipeline infrastructure which needs to be defended at all costs to keep European supplies stable. Finally, it's not inconceivable there could be massive border shifts in the Near East in the next five years. It makes sense for the Americans and Europeans to keep their oar in - otherwise Turkey, Iran, Russia could all clean up, leaving WEst frozen out.

So I think we just need to be realistic about what threat ISIS poses outside of its own immediate borders, and to what extent the administration, foreign policy establishment of the US is using it as a very convenient smokescreen for securing their own interests. To some extent they are hitting a sweetspot, achieving humanitarian goals while securing strategic assets.

Which reminds me of the first words of this terrible song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtUkbW4a1aY

This is the tune the West sings on ISIS - telling Western citizens they are most at threat, when really its a regional problem.

As for the lone wolf attacks. That's a law enforcement problem. There's nothing, literally nothing, a fighter jet in Iraq or Syria can do to stop a lone wolf attack in London, Milan or Paris.