What about the rest of the region– living with food insecurity, water shortages, electrical shortages and hundreds of millions of people are ensnared in a cycle of poverty, despair, and hopelessness, from- Egypt to Yemen, from Syria to Lebanon, from Sudan to Iran to Libya?
If not for big oil the Middle East would not get much consideration. The decline of the Islamic Empire was partly the fault of Christopher Columbus. Europeans had to pass through all Islamic territories on the trade routes to the East, in which they paid a heavy price. After Columbus discovered the so-call “New World”, new resources began coming from the New World, and Europeans started circumnavigating around Africa, which started the slow decline of the Islamic Empire. It was not until Europeans discovered oil in the Middle East that brought the Islamic world back to some relevance.