Islamic State Militants Eye Mecca, Medina

From the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, the terror group known as the Islamic State is preparing yet another front in its quest to reestablish an Islamic caliphate, this time hoping to wrest Saudi Arabia from a royal family that has long maintained its grip on power.

Saudi Arabia might seem to be an unlikely target for the Islamic State. Unlike countries such as Iraq, Syria and Libya, it is not a failed state. Also, just like the Islamic State’s leadership, Saudi Arabia's rulers are adherents of Sunni Islam. 

Still, counterterrorism officials, former diplomats and analysts say the threat to Saudi Arabia from the Islamic State is one that cannot be dismissed.

“Their ambitions don’t stop at Ramadi,” former U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker told VOA via Skype, referring to the Islamic State’s conquest of the contested capital of Iraq's Anbar province.

“What they would really like to be able to do is penetrate into Saudi Arabia and take the holy cities of Mecca and Medina as the capital of their caliphate,” he added.

Whether the Islamic State has the wherewithal to follow through, however, remains a question. By most accounts, the group's presence in Saudi Arabia is small. Its sympathizers have also come under heavy pressure from Saudi authorities, who in April announced the arrests of 93 suspects, 65 of them Saudi citizens.

Unlike in Syria, Iraq and Libya, the Islamic State group will not be able to take advantage of a weak or non-existent central government. Current and former U.S. officials say Saudi police, intelligence and counterterror units are more than capable of cracking down. 

“The Saudis really cleaned house for a while,” Skinner said. “The problem is, it’s such a dirty house that it’s near impossible to clean.”

Another part of the problem is the longstanding undercurrent of support for extremist thinking, especially among youth, combined with what had been a constant flow of funding for radical religious leaders who straddled the fine line between ultra-conservative teachings and extremist ideology.

“I think the Saudis have done a lot better,” said former U.S. ambassador Mark Wallace, now the chief executive officer at the Counter Extremism Project. “Certainly there are always individual power brokers that we have to be vigilant about and that the Saudis have to be vigilant about as well.”

Still, the temptation or pressure to restore that funding may be growing as Riyadh’s proxy war with rival Tehran becomes more intense, with some analysts warning the conflict is already causing many Saudi officials to view events in the Middle East through a Sunni-Shi’ite lens.

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“As this clash between Iran and Saudi Arabia intensifies, I think it’s going to be pretty unavoidable that the Saudis are going to support the Islamic State or support militant groups that are under the Islamic State's umbrella,” said Reuel Marc Gerecht with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

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