Osama Bin Laden?s enmity toward Saudi Arabia?s ruling family has long been well known, but his latest speech could imply a sea change in strategy or at least in targeting. In its focus on the crimes of the Saud family, the document looks much like the first of the famous Bin Laden statements, a fatwa printed in the pan-Arab newspaper, al-Quds al-Arabi. Like this speech, the fatwa focuses on enumerating the failures and ?treasons? of the Saud family and their place in the international crusader-Zionist conspiracy. However, that document ends with very different prescriptions for Bin Laden?s followers. He warns against attacking the royal family, or any Muslims present in the Kingdom, advocating that such violence would be detrimental to the community: ?an internal war would be a great mistake,? he wrote, ?no matter what reasons are there for it. The presence of the occupier–the USA–forces will control the outcome of the battle for the benefit of the international Kufr [?infidel-ness? or disbelief].? He built a careful argument for avoiding striking the government, arguing that channeling violence toward the American presence in the region is the best way to achieve the most important goal: driving the infidels from the peninsula. After that, Bin Laden believed, the local authorities could be deposed easily: ?There is a duty on the Muslims to ignore the minor differences among themselves; the ill effect of ignoring these differences, at a given period of time, is much less than the ill effect of the occupation of the Muslims’ land by the main kafir (infidel). Ibn Taymiyyah had explained this issue and emphasized the importance of dealing with the major threat on the expense of the minor one;? the minor threat referred to the government; the major threat referred to the Americans. He ends by giving four reasons why ?the Muslims must not be engaged in an internal war among themselves,? namely ?1-consumption of the Muslims human resources as most casualties and fatalities will be among the Muslims people. 2-Exhaustion of the economic and financial resources. 3-Destruction of the country infrastructures. 4-Dissociation of the society.?

This basic premise continued into Bin Laden?s even more infamous 1998 fatwa, which called on Muslims to attack Americans ?wherever [they] may find them,? and other statements and attacks have continued to target Americans and other Westerners over Muslims. Although Bin Laden has since that time reserved the right to attack Pakistan and any Muslim countries that aided in the Iraq war ?especially Kuwait [Country Profile],? he has never before put such emphasis on attacking Saudi indigenous targets, even, it appears in this speech, over American ones. His strategy has been changed by his changing view of local politics: his 1996 and 1998 fatwa make obvious that he believed that the Americans protected the Sauds and kept them in power, bringing with them all of the negative political, economic, and military interference. From this latest speech, he demonstrates his view that American power in the region is extended by the Sauds; it is the Sauds that protect American influences and interests in the Kingdom, rather than the opposite. For example, he claims that Crown Prince Abdulaziz ?stood as America?s representative in the first part of the Iraq war,? by telling Muslims ?that anyone who believed the American mobilization in the Gulf was for the purposes of war was foolish?so that preparations for war would not be made and to disseminate among us submissiveness, to [facilitate] the surrendering to the enemy.? In order to get rid of the ?Kufr? influence, it is the Saudi government that must be attacked.