Over the past century, the history of West Asia has been deeply intertwined with war, violence, and political instability. Against this historical backdrop, the war between Iran and the United States-Israel alliance in February 2026 was, at least for the inhabitants of the region, neither entirely unexpected nor profoundly shocking; nor is it likely to constitute the region’s final conflict. Why, then, has West Asia remained persistently unstable throughout the past century? Scholars have approached this question from a variety of perspectives. One of the most frequently invoked explanations attributes the region’s enduring conflicts to the ideological character of its nation-states, which is said to obstruct the establishment of lasting peace. Although this argument is not entirely without merit, it cannot capture the full complexity of the issue. This essay seeks to illuminate the material dimensions of conflict in West Asia and to critically examine the broader system that has reproduced and entrenched such crises across the region. To understand this system, however, we must begin outside West Asia.
Following the Second World War, the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 laid the foundations of a new international monetary and financial order, in which the US dollar, backed by gold, became the principal currency of global commerce. Under this arrangement, one ounce of gold was fixed at 35 US dollars. The brevity of this account should not create the impression that the event itself was of limited significance. Bretton Woods was one of the most consequential moments in the history of modern politics. In its aftermath, the United States acquired an unprecedented degree of power and influence across the world. The growing dependence of states on dollar-denominated trade and financial institutions significantly expanded Washington’s capacity to influence their economic and foreign policy choices.
In subsequent years, however, the system confronted a major contradiction. The high level of US government expenditure at the time—most importantly, the costs of the war in Vietnam—forced the government to issue more dollars than its gold reserves could support. This, in turn, placed increasing pressure on the United States’ gold holdings. In 1971, Richard Nixon, then President of the United States, therefore terminated the convertibility of the dollar into gold. Yet the abandonment of gold raised a fundamental question: what could now serve as the foundation of the dollar, preventing disorder in the global economy while preserving the currency as an instrument through which the United States could exert pressure on other countries? The answer to this question would, to a considerable extent, determine the fate of Iran and, indeed, of West Asia as a whole: oil.
Long before the Nixon Shock, the discovery of oil in West Asia had already generated a series of crises. Colonial powers sought by every available means to establish control over the region’s vast petroleum resources. In pursuit of this objective, they refrained from no form of intervention, including occupation, coups, and war. Nor was this dynamic confined to the period of formal colonial rule and the direct occupation of West Asia. Although colonialism was officially understood to have ended by the conclusion of the Second World War, the 1944 petroleum agreement between Britain and the United States demonstrated that, despite declarations concerning the end of colonialism, the conduct of the major powers had changed very little. Under this agreement, the US Department of State explained that the principle of equitable distribution and exploitation partially disregarded the sovereign rights of oil-producing states and presupposed a form of trusteeship by the great powers over the world’s petroleum resources 1. For the Iranian people, the most familiar example of this disregard for sovereign rights is the 1953 coup. Through British and American cooperation and the direct intervention of both powers in Iran’s domestic affairs, the government of Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown for the “crime” of nationalizing the Iranian oil industry.
With the end of the war and the beginning of reconstruction in the countries affected by it, global demand for petroleum rose dramatically. The rapid expansion of the automobile and aviation industries itself is sufficient to demonstrate that oil was gradually becoming both the foundation of the global economy and the world’s most strategically significant commodity.
The fact that almost all global oil transactions at the time were conducted in US dollars gave the currency a distinctive position. Through the emergence of a new arrangement known as the petrodollar system, the dollar was able to retain its central commercial role in the global economy. This connection meant that Washington could continue to deploy its “paper soldiers” in order to consolidate and reproduce its domination over the world 2.
Throughout these decades, West Asia has borne the costs of this destructive linkage between oil and the dollar in the form of disorder, war, internal conflict, and economic sanctions. By weakening the societies and states of West Asia—through impoverishment and the destruction of social institutions capable of producing a degree of stability—these processes rendered the countries of the region dependent, first, on oil itself and, at a deeper level, on the American capitalist order.
The historical experience of different forms of colonial domination, together with the imposition of the legal and economic order of the postcolonial world—including the petrodollar system—has also shaped the conduct of the states of West Asia. The more militarized and undemocratic forms of governance that developed in parts of the region were shaped, at least in part, by this history. Colonial domination, military occupation, and prolonged disorder destroyed existing ways of life and social institutions within these societies. At the same time, the need to resist the pressures and interventions of foreign powers often strengthened military and security institutions at the expense of civilian, representative, and social institutions 3. Oil capitalism and the petrodollar system have thus helped sow the seeds of recurring social, economic, and geopolitical crises in the region’s oil-producing states, contributing to the persistence of unrest, war, and political violence.
Yet no system remains stable indefinitely. The petrodollar system has never been as vulnerable as it is today. The rise of China as a serious rival to the US economy and to American economic hegemony has compelled the United States to adopt increasingly aggressive forms of conduct. As the world’s largest consumer of oil, China possesses the capacity to transform the prevailing global economic order by altering the terms and mechanisms of petroleum trade. For this reason, the United States has sought to expand its access to and control over the world’s oil resources in an effort to contain China’s growing power. The conflict with Venezuela and the abduction of Nicolás Maduro, then President of Venezuela, should likewise be understood within this broader effort to preserve the petrodollar system.
For the United States, control over petroleum resources is not merely a matter of the revenues they generate. More importantly, it is a matter of protecting the value of the dollar, which has constituted the anchor and foundation of US global hegemony throughout the decades since the Second World War. Oil, therefore, is not merely an important commodity for the United States; it is a vital strategic asset. Safeguarding oil and the economic system built around it—the petrodollar system—is, in effect, inseparable from safeguarding the United States itself. For this reason, oil in the United States is treated not simply as an economic concern, but as a matter of national security. Even a brief examination of the political history of the United States clearly illustrates this point: in 1980, Carter told Congress that the United States would employ any means necessary—including military force—to safeguard the flow of oil. Three years later, the Reagan administration established the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), a military command deployed in West Asia whose mission included securing the region’s oil flows 4. Through the militarization of energy routes, support for allied oil-producing regimes, intervention against governments seeking greater control over petroleum revenues, and the use of dollar-based sanctions, this order has repeatedly transferred substantial political and social costs to the peoples of West Asia.
Taken together, these considerations demonstrate that the conflicts of the past century in West Asia cannot be understood without attention to material and geopolitical forces. The reduction of these conflicts to an ideological confrontation, as it is represented in much of the media, cannot adequately account for the situation.
Ideological pressures and orientations do not, by themselves, explain why states move toward war or peace. Rather, their effects are mediated and constrained by broader material, historical, and geopolitical conditions. Oil and the petroleum-related structures of contemporary capitalism, among the most decisive geopolitical forces in the world and in the political economy of West Asian states, will continue to shape the course of history in the region.
Drawing on the work of Timothy Mitchell, a leading scholar of the history and political economy of oil, an examination of oil’s history and political economy reveals a fundamental contradiction: what is widely regarded as the vital resource of the modern world and the foundation of the global economy has, for the peoples of West Asia—and perhaps for the world as a whole—become a threat to the continuation of life itself 5.
Mojtaba Poorhashemi Ardakani is a researcher of political economy and contemporary history of West Asia. His areas of interest include the formation of the modern state, the history of colonialism, and the political economy of oil in West Asia.