ALL THREE ARE OUR FAR ENEMIES:

[T]he implications of one side's vic­tory or of continuing division are profound for the Middle East and for the United States, shaping the likely targets of the jihad­ist movement, its ability to achieve its goals and the overall stability of the Middle East. The United States can exploit this split, both to decrease the threat and to weaken the movement as a whole.

The Islamic State and Al-Qaeda fundamentally differ on whom they see as their main enemy, which strategies and tactics to use in attacking that enemy and which social issues and other concerns to emphasize.

Although the ultimate goal of Al-Qaeda is to overthrow the corrupt "apostate" regimes in the Middle East and replace them with "true" Islamic governments, Al-Qaeda's pri­mary enemy is the United States, which it sees as the root cause of the Middle East's problems.

The logic behind this "far enemy" strategy is based on the idea that U.S. mili­tary and economic support for corrupt dic­tators in the Middle East--such as the lead­ers of Egypt and Saudi Arabia--is what has enabled these regimes to withstand attempts to overthrow them. By targeting the United States, Al-Qaeda believes it will eventually force the United States to withdraw its sup­port for these regimes and pull out of the region altogether, thus leaving the regimes vulnerable to attack from within.

The Islamic State does not follow Al-Qa­eda's "far enemy" strategy, preferring instead the "near enemy" strategy, albeit on a re­gional level. As such, the primary target of the Islamic State has not been the United States, but rather apostate regimes in the Arab world--namely, the Bashar Assad regime in Syria and the Haider al-Abadi regime in Iraq.

Baghdadi favors first purifying the Islamic community by at­tacking Shia and other religious minorities as well as rival jihadist groups. The Islamic State's long list of enemies includes the Iraqi Shia, Hezbollah, the Yazidis (a Kurdish eth­no-religious minority located predominantly in Iraq), the wider Kurdish community in Iraq, the Kurds in Syria and rival opposition groups in Syria (including Jabhat al-Nusra). And (surprise!) the Jews.

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