Saudi Arabia Announces 400+ IS Arrests As IS Launches Attack Outside Of Prison

According to Saudi Arabian officials, more than 430 Saudis have been arrested recently under suspicion to links with the Islamic State. Most of those arrested reportedly were involved in plots designated to further spread sectarian conflicts in Saudi Arabia by targeting minority Shiites.

Amongst the some-430 arrested, 144 suspects are accused of promoting IS’s teachings online and recruiting new members. Furthermore, 97 suspects are suspected to have been part of a cell that carried out a bombing in November that killed seven people at a Shiite mosque. Finally, 190 individuals are accused of being involved in various other Shiite mosque attacks.

Last November, IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi set his eyes on Saudi Arabia, and IS militants have since carried out numerous attacks in the Saudi kingdom. Targeting Saudi Arabia fulfills two of IS ideological aspirations, both targeting Shiites as well as the Saudi government which has been deemed the “greatest enemy of Islam” by IS leaders. The first attack, in May of this year, left 21 dead after a suicide bomber detonated himself outside of a Shiite mosque. Most recently, last Thursday a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb outside of Saudi Arabia’s highest security prison, which has hundreds of Islamist terrorist detainees. After the attack, Islamic State released a statement saying:

“The Muslim prisoners in Ha’er and everywhere should know that we won’t tire and we won’t rest until we end their detention, God willing.”

The Islamic State’s strategy forces the Saudi government both to be viewed as defending the Shiites and imprisoning jihadists.

The announcement of mass arrests highlight the genuine fear the House of Saud must hold of the thousands of Saudi subjects who have joined the ranks of IS. According to a poll last year, “92 percent of Saudi Arabians believe that, “IS conforms to the values of Islam and Islamic law.” This could prove to be a major issue, since the House of Saud relies heavily on credentials as an Islamic state which has implemented Sharia for their own legitimacy.

There are also questions regarding how effective Saudi forces would be against a genuine Islamic State offensive. The majority of the Saudi army is made up of regular subjects, which leads to the potential of a similar situation as that in Iraq when Iraqi forces proved unwilling to fight on behalf of the Iraqi government. The Saudis are likely to increasingly rely on the National Guard, who are more strenuously vetted for loyalty and tribal affiliation.

While the Islamic State is clearly not in a position to conduct such an assault at this time, they clearly are intensifying their targeting of Saudi Arabia.  The recent boasting of counterterrorism successes and persistent reassurance that the House of Saud has everything under control is less than convincing in the face of a Saudi population that overwhelming views the Islamic State as equally, or perhaps more legitimate than their own rulers.