Death Rattle from the House of Saud?

What is interesting about the Gray Lady's coverage this morning is the overt mention that current events in the Middle East point to the possibility that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia might be on the verge of collapse.

First, in Thomas Erdbrink's "U.S. and Iran Face Common Enemies in Mideast Strife," a story detailing the shared interests of the United States and Iran in combating the recent florescence of Sunni fundamentalism in the Middle East -- a story mostly built out of quotes from Aziz Shahmohammadi, a former adviser to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council -- comes this pearl in the third-to-last paragraph:

“We are worried for Saudi Arabia, which seems weak and potentially unstable,” said Mr. Shahmohammadi, the former adviser, who heads an institute that promotes dialogue between Sunnis and Shiites. “Even we, as their competitor, see all the horrible consequences if things go wrong there.”

Then after reading the Anne Barnard-Rick Gladstone piece, "Rebel Infighting Spreads to an Eastern Syrian City," on the civil war among Saudi-backed jihadis fighting the Syrian civil war, one comes upon Anne Barnard's noteworthy "Saudis’ Grant to Lebanon Is Seen as Message to U.S." Here Barnard explores the issues involved in Saudi Arabia's $3 billion "gift" to the Lebanese Army for the purchase of French weapons. (What she doesn't mention is that the French are being rewarded by the Saudis for obstructing the P5+1 nuclear agreement with Iran.) And once again the image of a bloated, senile, despotic Saudi Arabia floats to the surface:

Yezid Sayigh, a scholar of Arab militaries at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said the Saudis were declaring a “tactical divorce” from the Obama administration over their frustrations with what they see as America’s indecisiveness on Syria and its attempts at reconciliation with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional rival and Hezbollah’s patron. 

“They’re on the warpath, angry, and that doesn’t make for good policy,” Mr. Sayigh said. 

Analysts on both sides agree that if Lebanon’s government, under Saudi pressure, pushed the army to confront Hezbollah, it would risk fracturing the force along political and sectarian lines and destroying the closest thing the country has to a broad-based national institution. Mr. Sayigh said that not even the United States had tried to link aid to Lebanon’s army with action against Hezbollah. 

“Those are illusions,” said Talal Atrissi, a Lebanese military analyst who favors Hezbollah. “The Lebanese Army would be dismantled.”

While the Gray Lady has regularly reported Saudi estrangement with the Obama administration, she has not done so through an interpretive lens that focuses on Saudi weakness, irrationality and instability. This seems new and -- spread over three different stories -- feels intentional. One would have to go back to the Sunday Review opinion piece by Christopher Davidson, "The Last of the Sheiks?," published last October to find a similar example of speculation regarding the impending doom of the House of Saud.

The New York Times is largely aligned with the Obama administration. This is no mystery. All one has to do is read the Gray Lady's coverage of the recent implementation of the Affordable Care Act to figure this out. A message is being sent to the Saudis: "Relax!"