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ISIS Sets Its Sights on Saudi Arabia
(National Journal-Defense One) Kristin Roberts - In May there were two suicide bombings targeting Shiites in Sunni Saudi Arabia, both claimed by ISIS. In Dammam on the Saudi eastern coast, a man dressed as a woman blew himself up outside a Shiite mosque and killed three others. (The attack would have been far more devastating had guards not stopped the bomber from entering the mosque, forcing him back into a parking lot.) Eight days earlier, an attack on another Shia mosque in Al Qadeeh killed 21. "They certainly are significant," says Mike Singh, former senior director for Middle East affairs at the U.S. National Security Council. "These attacks seem designed to exacerbate sectarian divisions, precisely as ISIS has sought to do elsewhere." ISIS wants to encourage Sunni-Shia hostility throughout the Muslim world because it fits its caliphatic goals.