Bin Laden turns heat on Saudi Arabia

If bin Laden’s assertions are true, and Saudi Arabia’s Afghanistan-like intervention in Iraq continues to prevent the mujahideen unity bin Laden advocates, the al-Qaeda chief and his shura (consultative) council may soon confront the very unpalatable necessity of having to break with their traditional grand strategy and move to try to destroy the Saudi regime.

In such a scenario, al-Qaeda would abandon the pinprick insurgency-and-terrorism campaign it has conducted in the kingdom since September 11, and employ all the force it commands and can incite there—and bring in from Iraq – to take on the well-infiltrated Saudi military and security services. Such a campaign probably would combine attempts to assassinate the king, the interior minister and senior intelligence and military officials with attacks to disrupt Saudi oil production.
The latter operations would be staged in the hope of forcing Washington to a Hobson’s choice between standing back and allowing havoc to reign in the world’s oil market – with the immense damage it would entail for the US economy – and ordering US military forces into action against Muslims in order to restore oil production on the sacred soil of the Prophet Mohammad’s birthplace and what bin Laden refers to as “the land of the two holy mosques”.

Asia Times