What ISIS achieves by striking terror at heart of Medina

The terror attacks on three targets in Saudi Arabia this week signal a shift in the Islamic State's strategy. The strike on the mosque in Medina where Prophet Muhammad is buried killed four security guards and injured several others.

Saudi Arabia funded and armed the early version of ISIS which morphed from al-Qaeda. Qatar was a willing accomplice in creating a lethal Sunni terror group to counter the Shia axis in Iran, Iraq and Syria.

ISIS filled the vacuum left by the premature withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in 2011. It was one of US President Barack Obama's biggest strategic blunders.

The Iraqi army was in disarray following the ill-advised US invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Iraqi bureaucracy had been disbanded by the Americans. It was in this lawless environment that ISIS made lightning territorial advances in June 2014, reaching the outskirts of Baghdad.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar watched this unfolding scene with quiet satisfaction. They gave ISIS the arms and money it needed to capture nearly a third of Iraq's territory including Mosul, Iraq's second largest city.

Further north, as Obama followed a cynical strategy of overthrowing Syrian president Bashar al-Assad (an Alawite, a Shia-affiliated sect), Saudi funding and arms enabled ISIS to seize Raqqa and Aleppo. Sunni Turkey was another willing accomplice.

The turning point came on September 30, 2015 when Russia entered the conflict. Since then ISIS has lost roughly 20 per cent of its territory in Syria.

An emboldened, resurgent Iraqi army, bolstered by Shia fighters from Iran and renewed US air power, has meanwhile retaken Fallujah, a short drive to the west of Baghdad.

The Saudi economy has been hit by the plunge in oil prices from $115 in 2014 to $50 today. Its army is bogged down in Yemen fighting the Houthi rebels, a Shia sect.

ISIS has now predictably turned on its progenitor. Sections of ISIS always wanted to overthrow the feudal royals of Saudi Arabia. The triple attacks in Saudi cities this week are symbolic. The attack on the Prophet's mosque in Medina in particular marks a new phase for ISIS.

The disintegrating Islamic "caliphate" knows it will eventually lose Raqqa and Mosul. It is therefore preparing for a franchise future.

The Dhaka attack was a typical franchised, outsourced strike with no direct ISIS role. The Orlando attack was also part of the franchise model in which lone wolf terror attacks are not directed by ISIS but inspired by its venal ideology.

Similar outsourced terror attacks have taken place this week in Malaysia and Indonesia. The Dhaka attack also demonstrates how radical Islamist ideology has penetrated socio-economic barriers: the attackers were wealthy, young and educated.

The terror attack on the Prophet's mosque in Medina strikes at the very heart of the Saudi kingdom. Just as Pakistan is being devoured by the Taliban which it helped create, Saudi Arabia will increasingly be consumed by Islamic state terrorists as they are driven out of Iraq and Syria and into the arms of their creator.