For the fifth anniversary of 9/11, al-Qaeda's executive officer Ayman al-Zawahiri celebrated by publishing a video that threatened a new phase in the group's offensive against the West. In this new effort, the Egyptian terror leader told viewers that AQ would now target Gulf states, including oil facilities, that cooperated with the infidels. Foiled attacks on a Yemeni refinery and a Canadian-Yemeni storage facility appears to have launched the AQ offensive, but both failed to achieve their mission objectives:

Suicide bombers tried to strike two oil facilities in Yemen with explosives-packed cars, but authorities foiled the attacks and four bombers and a security guard were killed, the government said Friday.

Friday's attacks happened 35 minutes apart, targeting a Yemeni oil refinery in the northeast province of Mareb and a Canadian-Yemeni oil storage facility at the Dubba Port in Haramut province — scene of a 2002 attack on the French tanker Limburg, an Interior Ministry statement said.

The statement said an investigation was under way to determine the identity of the "terrorist elements" behind the attacks.

Unlike the amateurish attack on the US Embassy in Syria, which looks suspiciously like a Syrian ploy, this attack does resemble an AQ attack. Multiple locations and coordination, along with target selection, seems much more in line with previous AQ operations, and given Zawahiri's statement, matches the goals of the terrorist group. The tape must have been the signal for the cells to complete their missions, and we can expect more such attacks in the coming days.

It appears as if AQ wanted more than just an economic target in Yemen. The president, Ali Abdullah Seleh, has ruled the Gulf state for almost thirty years, and the upcoming election promises a tough fight for him to keep his post. His cooperation with the West and the sale of oil to the West has attracted AQ's attention, and a successful attack might have undermined Saleh.

Fourteen AQ terrorists who escaped earlier this year still have not been found. The four terrorists who died in the botched attack could have come from this group, or perhaps lead the cell that undertook this mission and others. Whoever planned and executed it, the failure of the mission gives AQ a black eye and underscores their lack of effect in the years between 9/11 and its fifth anniversary. The scale of their attacks has increasingly declined, and their reach appears to have shortened considerably. That may have been the reason that Zawahiri announced the targeting of Gulf states and the Western assets there, rather than attacks in the US and Europe; they may no longer have the resources to carry out any other kinds of attacks.

It seems as though AQ has recently run across a cash and competence deficit, while the West has gained in intelligence and prevention. The end of the latest air attack shows that we have used the tools available to us to effectively penetrate their conspiracies, and the failure of that mission may have convinced Zawahiri to aim closer to home, thinking that security could be more easily compromised. It appears he still came up short.

He will try again, though, and he only has to get lucky once in order to get oil traders nervous all over again. Zawahiri is determined to commit himself to an economic war, and he's picking the right targets for it, even if he can't hit them.

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Tracked on September 15, 2006 10:53 AM