The Oil Illusion and the Fall of the Village Master
Imagine living in a large village, home to hundreds of thousands, yet no one trusts anyone else. Every house is closed off, and every family fears being robbed if they open their door. In the center of the village lies a deep well, replenished by rain once a year. Whoever owns a large bucket or a powerful pump controls who drinks and who goes thirsty. For decades, the villagers believed this well was their source of sustenance, selling it drop by drop and using the proceeds to buy heavier locks, higher walls, and more guards. They built no school, no hospital, not even a shared road. All they did was guard the well and fight amongst themselves over who got closer to it.
Now, a powerful man from outside the village arrives, possessing his own river and endless pumps. He tells them: “This well is no longer necessary. I have better, cheaper water, and I will decide who drinks.” Then he pointed to one of the village houses, the one that had always defied him, and said, “I will demolish his house and build a water station in its place.” Suddenly, the man with the largest bucket, who considered himself the master of the village, was terrified. Not because he loved his neighbor, but because he knew: once a stranger controls all the water sources, he will have no voice anymore. He will become merely a servant at the river gate.
This simple analogy is what is happening today in the Middle East: the well is oil, the strongman is the United States, the rejected house is Iran, and the village master is Saudi Arabia. The problem is not Saudi fear, but the illusion that Arabs have lived with for half a century: that money creates power, and that loyalty to a foreign power guarantees survival. Today, with the possibility of Iran, which possesses the fourth largest oil reserves and the second largest gas reserves in the world, falling under direct American influence, this illusion is beginning to crumble before our very eyes.
The Centralized State or a Living Society? Confronting Destiny
This moment is not just a geopolitical catastrophe, but an existential test for the entire modern Arab political project. Because true power is no longer measured by the size of treasuries or the number of tanks, but by the ability of peoples to build vibrant societies capable of thinking, producing, and participating. For decades, regimes have gambled on a single model: a strong, centralized state that imposes unity from above, views diversity as a threat, and generates security through fear, not trust.
Instead of investing oil revenues in human development—in education, health, and creativity—they squandered billions on foreign weapons, lavish palaces, and entertainment projects that do nothing to feed the hungry. Even when they spoke of Arab unity, their words were empty, because they hadn’t built any real institutions to bind their peoples together: no common currency, no unified army, no regional energy grid, not even educational curricula that tell a shared history.
And now, they are paying the price. The fall of Iran, should it occur, will not be merely a change in the power map, but the end of the oil game altogether, because America, which has become the world’s largest oil producer, will add to its domestic production the output of both Venezuela and Iran. Thus, Washington would be able to pump whatever it wants, whenever it wants, to lower prices and strike at adversaries, or raise them to punish disobedient allies, or use Iranian gas and oil as a geopolitical gift to Israel or India. At that point, Saudi Arabia, once considered the oil kingmaker, would lose all its influence. What good is being a swing producer if your rival possesses three times your capacity?
But the deeper danger is not economic, but existential: the fall of Iran would mean isolating Russia from a strategic ally, weakening China on the Silk Road, and tightening the noose around the Arabs, who would find themselves without an ally, without oil to negotiate with, and without a unifying project. They would become soulless nations, managed from beyond their borders, with no say in matters of war or peace, normalization or resistance, education or the economy. Their decisions would be predetermined, written in closed rooms in capitals that see them only as tools or obstacles.
The Undying Seed: Cultural and Societal Resistance
Today, we desperately need not traditional military resistance, for it will fail as it has before, but a cultural and social revolution. True power is not built on weapons or money, but on culture, collective consciousness, and the capacity for production. What is the point of possessing the strongest army if the people are ignorant, divided, and afraid of their own shadows? What is the point of possessing oil if not a single idea is produced, not a single work of art is exported, and not a single technology is invented?
Do you think that America or any other power would threaten the region if Arabs were exporting solar energy, producing pharmaceuticals, and teaching a new philosophy? Of course not. Because true power lies not in what you possess, but in what you produce.
The problem is that the ruling elites do not want this change. They profit from the status quo: they sell oil, buy weapons, pay the bills for their palaces, and maintain their positions through repression. They know that any genuine democratic project based on participation, diversity, and decentralization will threaten their existence. Therefore, they prefer the region to remain fragmented, fearful, and dependent on foreign powers. This is precisely what the great powers exploit: they don’t want to topple regimes for the sake of freedom, but rather to transform them into service stations in a global system where there is no place except for the dominant or the subordinate. And when they succeed, they will turn their attention to the rest of the region, perhaps supporting new secessions as they did with Somaliland, or fueling civil wars as in Sudan, or funding sectarian militias as in Iraq and Syria. Because chaos is the cheapest means of domination.
But in the face of this bleak reality, there is still hope. And hope doesn’t come from governments, but from ordinary people: from the teacher who teaches her children that a homeland is not borders, but values; from the young man who translates philosophy books into Arabic; from the woman who opens a small workshop in her village; from the artist who paints the suffering of his people without fear; from the activist who builds a bridge between sects that were fighting yesterday.
These are the true builders of the future. Because they don’t wait for a leader to save them, but begin where they are, with their own means, with their own dreams. They alone are capable of breaking the cycle of dependency and building…
A true power, unthreatened by the fall of Iran, and undeterred by Trump’s pronouncements.
Ultimately, history will not ask: Who owned the oil?
But: Who built a free human being?
And the Arabs today face two choices:
Either they continue guarding the well until it runs dry,
Or they sow new seeds in soil that has been neglected for centuries.
