Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah died early Friday morning and although naturally there is a successor (albeit 79 years old, with dementia), something tells me that regime change, the good old American way, is just around the corner.

They’re already setting the stage:

King Abdullah’s death comes at a time of extraordinary challenges for Saudi Arabia.

Plummeting oil prices have strained the nation’s domestic spending and support to foreign allies. The kingdom’s regional dominance is increasingly threatened by Iran, Saudi Arabia’s bitter rival. Extremist groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State have vowed to target the kingdom.

The new king’s age and reported illness raise the prospect of protracted instability. Saudi tradition passes the crown down the line of the sons of the kingdom’s founder, Ibn Saud. But with the youngest son nearing 70, scores of grandchildren are now eyeing power. Meanwhile, Saudi activists fear that political uncertainty in the kingdom could further undermine the country’s dismal human rights record.

Indeed, the usual suspects are now coming out of the woodwork to predict trouble in the House of Saud:

“Despite so many people saying it will be a smooth transition, there’s every reason to believe that Saudi Arabia is heading for rough times,” Simon Henderson, an expert on the Saudi succession at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said in an interview Thursday.

“Having a king with dementia is the last thing they need at this difficult time,” Henderson said. “Yemen is falling apart, ISIS is knocking at the door . . . this is an extraordinarily dangerous Middle East from a Saudi perspective.”

What makes me think the US and its allies are up to no good in Saudi Arabia? Flashback to July 2002.

Diplomatic china rattled in Washington and cracked in Riyadh yesterday when the Washington Post published a story about a briefing given to a Pentagon advisory group last month. The briefing declared Saudi Arabia an enemy of the United States and advocated that the United States invade the country, seize its oil fields, and confiscate its financial assets unless the Saudis stop supporting the anti-Western terror network.

Of course it has nothing to do with terror and everything to do with oil. And the US and its allies (namely Israel) are itching to get at it. So much so that they spelled out the exact strategy in a 24 page powerpoint presentation titled “Taking Saudi Out of Arabia,” wherein Laurent Murawiec offered the US Defense Policy Board a step by step blueprint for regime change in Saudi Arabia.

In it, he argues that “violence is politics and politics is violence” in the Arab world.

and that the crisis cannot be contained to the Arab world alone.

He goes on to target specifically Saudi Arabia, which he admits is Arabia, but “needs not be ‘Saudi.'” So, he recommended the US give the Saudis an ultimatum.

or else…

The last slide in the deck, titled “Grand strategy for the Middle East,” abandons the outrageous for the incomprehensible. It reads:

• Iraq is the tactical pivot
• Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot
• Egypt the prize

Being Egyptian-American myself, I found this last slide very intriguing. I still don’t know what it means, but I suspect it has something to do with greater Israel.

In any event, it seems with King Abdullah dead, now is a good time for them to implement stage two of their grand plan.