ISIS turns on Saudi Arabia threatening to break open prisons

Two days ago ISIS attacked a Saudi Army position killing three soldiers: it was the first such raid by ISIS against Saudi military and comes at a time when ISIS has made a clear statement of intent to free jailed ISIS militants from Saudi jails, with the al-Ha'ir and Tarfiya prisons being specifically mentioned. Last weekend, Saudi authorities executed 47 men, saying that 43 of them were Al Qaeda militants. ISIS has carried out a number of raids within Saudi Arabia over the past year, but its capability to carry out a major jail break is questionable.

An earlier version of this article implied that the an alleged-Islamic State attack in Anbar province occurred in January, 2016. It actually took place in 2015. The story has been amended to reflect that fact.

The Islamic State has pledged to destroy two Saudi Arabian prisons that house jihadi detainees. The provocation comes four days after Saudi Arabia executed 47 people, including 43 that the government claims were al Qaeda militants — it was unclear if any Islamic State members were also among those put to death.

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Perhaps fearing that its imprisoned fighters would be executed en-masse next, IS is setting its sights on the Saudi prison system. "The Islamic State always seeks to free prisoners," the group said in an article posted online on Tuesday. "[THis] will not happen except with the eradication of the rule of tyrants, and then destroying their prisons and razing them to the ground." The message explicitly singled out the al-Ha'ir and Tarfiya prisons where the bulk of al Qaeda and Islamic State supporters are reportedly detained.

That message indicates IS may be ramping up its efforts against Saudi Arabia.

In November, 2014 IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced that the group had established a Saudi affiliate, though it controlled no territory within the Kingdom and had yet to take responsibility for any actions there. Saudi Arabia backs groups in Syria that fight against IS, and the the Kingdom's control of the Muslims holy sites inside the Arabian peninsula has long been considered unacceptable to both the Islamic State and its jihadi rival al Qaeda.

In the first week of 2015, a coordinated attack on a Saudi military position killed 3 Saudi soldiers near the border with Iraq's Anbar province. Though the Islamic State did not claim responsibility, the group is active in Anbar and analysts were quick to blame the group for the attack, characterizing it as a new stage in the IS conflict with the government in Riyadh. "It is the first attack by Islamic State itself against Saudi Arabia," Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi security analyst with close ties to Saudi Arabia's interior ministry, said at the time.

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The Saudi interior ministry said that four militants, armed with assault rifles, handguns and hand grenades, assaulted the border post. After one of the attackers was apprehended, he detonated an explosive belt, killing Saudi General Oudah al-Belawi, the senior border guard commander in the region. Though Saudi Arabia has not officially blamed the Islamic State for the attack, the interior ministry characterized the attackers as "kharijites," a term that refers to an early deviant Islamic sect that Saudi officials often compare with the Islamic State.

The group claimed responsibility for its first attack inside the kingdom in May, 2015, killing dozens of Shi'ite worshipers at a mosque in Qadeeh. An IS affiliate that called itself the "Najd Province" — named for a region of central Saudi Arabia — said it had carried out that attack to punish what it called "impure" worshippers.

Over the summer, Saudi Arabia cracked down on allegedmembers of the group, arresting 431 individuals it said had some links to IS. The details of that massive operation remain vague, but the Saudi government admitted that 37 people — including an unnamed number of security personnel — were killed bringing the IS members in. According to the Saudi government, these IS operatives it arrested had planned to attack mosques, and government buildings.

In August, IS struck again, this time hitting a mosque in Abha, by the Yemeni border. Another self-declared Islamic State province billing itself "Wiliyat Hijaz" carried out the strike, which killed 16 worshippers. And throughout the fall, IS took responsibility for a series of smaller mosque bombings across the country, prompting Saudi Arabia to call for the formation of an "anti-terror" military alliance with like-minded Muslim countries to combat the group in Syria and Iraq. That alliance has yet to produce any concrete military operations.