The century that made Washington the Middle East’s decisive power

Graphics: TBS

On 28 February 2026, the long, shadowed rivalry between Washington and Tehran exploded into open conflict. Within hours of coordinated American-Israeli air strikes over Iran, reports confirmed that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had been killed in a "decapitation" strike on his compound in Tehran.

For decades, the United States had insisted it sought containment, not conquest. It was openly attempting to dismantle Iran's nuclear programme and fracture its command structure. Iran responded with ballistic missiles and drones targeting Israel and US bases in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, Oman, and Iraq. By 5 March, the Middle East was in a state of declared war.

The question that hangs over this moment is not only what happens next. It is how an outsider, a power separated by oceans, acquired such weight that it could launch a campaign to reshape the leadership of a country at the heart of the region.

To understand that, we must step back more than a century.

Ottoman decline to oil empires

In the late 19th century, the Middle East was still largely under the Ottoman Empire, derided in Europe as the "Sick Man". Britain tightened its grip on Egypt and the Suez Canal to secure the sea route to India. France and Britain expanded their commercial concessions across the Levant.

The US was peripheral. American missionaries founded schools in Beirut and Cairo. A few merchants traded in the ports. Washington was not yet a geopolitical player.

The First World War changed that. The Ottoman collapse allowed Britain and France to divide much of the Arab provinces under the secret 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, creating mandates in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. Borders were drawn with imperial logic, not local consent.

But the true hinge of history was oil. Vast reserves in Persia and later the Arabian Peninsula transformed the strategic value of the region. American companies demanded access alongside British firms under an "Open Door" approach. Commerce came first; politics would follow.

US arrival

The Second World War bankrupted the European empires. Britain and France could no longer underwrite their global holdings. A vacuum opened, and the US stepped into it.

In February 1945, President Franklin D Roosevelt met King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud aboard a US warship in the Suez Canal. The so-called Quincy Agreement established the core bargain that still shapes Gulf politics: American security guarantees in exchange for stable oil access.

The message became clear during the 1956 Suez Crisis. When Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt over the nationalisation of the canal, President Eisenhower forced them to withdraw. It was a public funeral for European imperial authority. The United States was now the region's decisive external power.

At the same time, Cold War logic dictated the containment of Soviet influence. In 1953, the CIA helped remove Iran's prime minister and restore the Shah, anchoring Iran as a pro-Western bulwark on the Soviet border. Oil and anti-communism fused into one doctrine.

The tripod of power

This transformation is explored in "The Oil Kings", Andrew Scott Cooper's book of how the United States, Iran and Saudi Arabia altered the region's balance of power between 1941 and 1979.

Drawing on the politics of Iranian rule from the Allied occupation during the Second World War to the eve of the Iranian Revolution, Cooper shows how petroleum was not merely a commodity but the organising principle of geopolitics.

Does the United States "control" the Middle East? Not in the colonial sense once practised by Britain and France. Its influence rests instead on hegemony: the role of ultimate security guarantor for states whose economies depend on the free flow of oil through chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz.

The book's structure, chapters such as "Guardian of the Gulf", "Double Indemnity", "Screaming Eagle", "Oil Shock", "Oil War", "Henry's Wars" and "The Spirit of '76" chart a progression from partnership to crisis. The "Guardian of the Gulf" referred to Washington's reliance on regional pillars, Iran under the Shah and Saudi Arabia under the House of Saud, to secure maritime oil routes and deter Soviet expansion.

The mid-1970s marked a climax. The 1973 oil embargo, imposed after the Arab-Israeli war, exposed the West's vulnerability. Energy prices quadrupled. Inflation surged across Europe and North America. The lesson in Washington was blunt: control over oil flows equalled strategic leverage.

It was during this period that the petrodollar system consolidated. Saudi Arabia priced oil exclusively in US dollars. In return, Washington guaranteed the kingdom's defence. Because every industrial state required oil, every state required dollars. Financial power reinforced military reach.

By 1979, the end point of Cooper's Iranian focus, the tripod of American, Iranian and Saudi interdependence had reshaped the region. Yet it was also fragile.

The 1979 Iranian Revolution shattered that arrangement. The Shah fell. Ayatollah Khomeini established an Islamic Republic defined by opposition to American influence. The United States lost its principal regional ally overnight.

In response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the new volatility in Tehran, President Jimmy Carter articulated the Carter Doctrine in 1980: any attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf would be regarded as an assault on US vital interests, to be repelled by force if necessary. It was a declaration that the Gulf was now a red line.

Institutionally, Washington strengthened its hand through Central Command (Centcom), expanding military infrastructure across the Gulf. The network of bases in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates turned influence into permanent presence.

Power and regime change

The 1991 Gulf War entrenched that footprint. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, the United States led a broad coalition that expelled Iraqi forces. After the war, "over-the-horizon" balancing gave way to permanent basing. American troops were no longer occasional visitors; they were fixtures.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq pushed further. Saddam was removed under claims of weapons of mass destruction that were never found. The Iraqi state apparatus collapsed, unleashing insurgency and sectarian conflict. Ironically, Iran, Saddam's old rival, expanded its influence across Iraq in the ensuing vacuum.

Libya followed in 2011. Nato's intervention, framed as civilian protection during the Arab Spring, ended with Muammar Gaddafi's overthrow and death. The country fractured into militia-ruled zones. In Syria, efforts to unseat Bashar al-Assad faltered when Russia and Iran intervened decisively. Assad remained, though Syria's eastern oil and wheat fields fell under US-backed control.

Economic warfare complemented bombs. Sanctions regimes isolated Iran and Syria from global finance. The leverage derived from the dollar-centric system proved as potent as missiles.

Yet by the late 2010s, fatigue set in. The American public questioned "forever wars". The US shale boom reduced reliance on Middle Eastern crude. Washington recalibrated from ambitious nation-building to narrower deterrence.

The 2020 Abraham Accords normalised relations between Israel and several Arab states, including the UAE and Bahrain. The objective was to consolidate a US-aligned bloc capable of counterbalancing Iran without large American troop surges.

But Iran remained defiant. Proxy networks in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen extended their reach. Israel struck Iranian positions in Syria. Skirmishes simmered, yet open war was avoided until now.

The second Iran war

The campaign that began on 28 February 2026 marks a departure from decades of shadow conflict. US and Israeli aircraft targeted Iranian air defences, nuclear facilities and command centres in an overwhelming first wave. The killing of Khamenei, at 86, the longest-serving supreme leader in modern Iranian history, created a power vacuum managed by an interim council under fire.

American objectives have been stated plainly: neutralise Iran's nuclear capacity and degrade the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Unlike earlier phases of containment, regime collapse is now openly contemplated.

Iran's retaliation has been region-wide. Ballistic missiles and drones have targeted Israel and US installations, including Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, Al-Dhafra in the UAE, and facilities in Kuwait, Iraq and Jordan. Patriot defence systems have intercepted many projectiles, but the message is unmistakable: the American security umbrella binds the Gulf into the conflict.

Under the 2026 National Defence Strategy, Washington has formally abandoned the language of transformation. It speaks of deterrence and strategic denial. Yet the scale of current operations, thousands of sorties, carrier strike groups in the Gulf and Mediterranean, B-2 bombers deployed to Diego Garcia, underscores that the United States remains the only external actor capable of projecting such concentrated force across the region.

Control or hegemony?

Does the United States "control" the Middle East? Not in the colonial sense once practised by Britain and France. Its influence rests instead on hegemony: the role of ultimate security guarantor for states whose economies depend on the free flow of oil through chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have diversified their partnerships, deepening ties with China and Russia. Yet when missiles fly, it is American radar, interceptors and aircraft that shield their skies.

The pattern is stark. States that aligned closely with Washington, notably the Gulf monarchies, secured protection and stability. Those that confronted it directly, Saddam's Iraq, Gaddafi's Libya, were dismantled. Others, like Syria, survived but were fragmented. Iran has endured, defiant, sanctioned, and now at war.

Century's reckoning

The arc from Ottoman decline to the present war is not a straight line of domination. It is a story of bargains and betrayals, of oil wells and aircraft carriers, of currency markets and covert operations.

Andrew Scott Cooper's book ends in 1979, at the moment when the Iranian Revolution overturned the carefully balanced tripod of US-Iranian-Saudi cooperation. Nearly half a century later, the consequences of that rupture are still unfolding.

The war of 2026 is not merely another flare-up. It is the culmination of a century in which petroleum wealth, Cold War rivalries, financial architecture and military might intertwined to make the United States the decisive external force in the Middle East.