An Islamic State suicide bomber struck the Shiite Imam Sadiq mosque in the center of Kuwait City June 26. On May 29, in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, another suicide bomber struck the entrance of a Shiite mosque just kilometers away from the site of a May 22 suicide bombing, also against a Shiite mosque, in the town of Qudaih, in the Shiite-majority Qatif province. That attack killed 21 and wounded more than 100.

IS may have chosen to target Kuwait as part of prior planning, but it is just as likely that the weak security coordination between Gulf countries has made Kuwait an alternative to the Shiite targets in Saudi Arabia, where security has been tightened.

IS is certainly planning its operations intelligently, choosing the right times and places and young operatives who believe in the idea of the caliphate ​​and who are GCC residents with clean security records. For them, traveling within the GCC countries — which IS refers to as Wilayat Najd — does not require visas. The Saudi Interior Ministry released a statement June 28 following the attack against the Kuwaiti mosque, identifying the perpetrator as Saudi citizen Fahd Suleiman al-Qabba and stressing that Qabba was not wanted by the authorities and had never traveled outside Saudi Arabia.

Many Sunni and Shiite liberal writers and analysts, such as Mohammed al-Mahmoud and Fuad Ibrahim, blame Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi religious curricula and satellite channels, especially Wesal TV and Safa TV, for the targeting of Shiite mosques in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Despite some truth in these accusations, they do not represent the main motives behind such bombings. These accusations represent an ideological stance that is anti-Salafism rather than logical analysis. This stance could be only partly true, for the following reasons: