The Suez Canal was the Middle East's great flashpoint until the eight-year war between Iraq and Iran. After that, the map of the conflict changed. The prize became the Gulf's oil, and it has remained the prize ever since.
The shift was gradual, unfolding from the 1950s to the present. Its logic remained consistent: nine times out of ten, oil was the underlying cause.
When Suez Was the Prize
The Suez Canal was the artery of world trade before oil was found in enormous quantities, and the Middle East mattered above all for its position astride it. Thirty percent of global trade passed through the canal.
When Egypt nationalized it in 1956, Britain, France, and Israel went to war to keep control of that passage. The wars of 1967 and 1973, again between Egypt and Israel, were fought over the same ground: Sinai and the canal. The stakes, in short, were geographic and commercial.
The Shift to the Gulf
Then a new factor overturned the balance entirely: oil.
1973: Oil becomes a weapon. After the October War, the Arab states turned oil into an instrument of policy, and the world understood for the first time that the Gulf could move the global economy.
1980–1988: The first Gulf war. The Iran–Iraq war was driven, most visibly, by the fight over the Shatt al-Arab and the oilfields beyond it.
1990–1991: The invasion of Kuwait. Iraq's aim was to seize a fifth of the world's oil reserves and erase its own debts. That was the logic of the invasion.
2003: The invasion of Iraq. The United States went in on the stated grounds of destroying Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, but the strategic prize was Iraqi oil- and the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Since 2011, the pattern has been proxy war: Yemen, Syria, the Gulf itself, each conflict tied to pipelines, the Strait of Hormuz, and the price of oil.
So why does everything come back to oil? Three things have made the Gulf the center of gravity.
The reserves. The Gulf states hold 48 percent of the world's proven oil reserves and the largest gas reserves on earth. Suez is still the route; the Gulf is the storehouse.
The Strait of Hormuz. Some 21 million barrels pass through it every day (20% of the world's supply). Whoever controls Hormuz has a hand on the global price, and Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman all sit on its shores.
The dollar and influence. Since the petrodollar arrangement took hold after 1974, oil has been priced in US dollars alone. That single fact binds Gulf security to the health of the entire global economy.
The contest, in other words, has moved from controlling the route (Suez) to controlling the source: the oilfields and the Strait of Hormuz.
As long as oil remains the lifeblood of the world economy, the Gulf will remain the hinge on which global stability turns. Oil is still the key and the Gulf is the door.
