The flip side of that cultural influence that while Saudi Arabia as a country is relatively young and the land is inhospitable compared with Iran, it also happens to be home to Mecca and Islam's other most holy city, which means the state is disproportionately influential over and vulnerable to adherents of the world's fastest growing and most highly-politicised religion. So it would be quite hard to ignore even if the neighbouring countries had most of the oil and especially if the House of Saud remained ostensibly friendly.

I'm under the impression that the US is mostly following rather than mostly leading in engagement with the Saudi rather than Iran: one country is lead by plutocrats whose relationship with the US is driven by desire to dominate the world oil trade, and the other controlled by powerful revolutionaries and theocrats whose control over an increasingly diverse society depends on invoking the spectre of "Great Satan" as recent history's most dangerous enemy.

As an Iranian, I don't see it as clear-cut.

1. Climate change is accelerating and changing geopolitics of the region faster. Iran’s power and influence has been continuously decreasing in past 2500 years as the Iranian Plateau has got drier. As an example, Iran’s population centers have been moving north as time goes on. 2. Do not ignore role of management and human resources in power and development. In past 40 years Iranians have been making big management and strategic mistakes. Mistakes that engaged them in an eight year war with their neighbor — Iraq, put their interests at adds with world’s largest economic and military power — the United States, and now fighting a cold war with the majority Sunni in the middle east. What do all these have in common?

This assumes the past mirrors the present. Solar panels for example could make Saudi Arabia a major energy power for a very long time frame. Saudi Arabia benefits from a much lower population density and significantly higher GDP per person.

Long term one of the largest questions is how cheap desalination can get. At ~100 gallons per cent both areas can effectively stop being deserts, but current prices of 3 gallons per cent act as a significant economic drain.

PS: In the US the average person directly uses ~90 gallons per day @ 3 gallons per cent that's only ~100$ per year for desalination. However, people use vastly more water indirectly, one pound of beef takes ~1,847 gallons.

Solar power is very democratizing in this respect, nobody is going to have a real lock in. Sure it's sunny in Saudi, but there's nobody anywhere near them that needs large amounts of electricity and couldn't just lay out panels themselves.

Their GDP is based on oil. In the long term that's going to dry up, and unless they institute major reforms starting right now they'll be in serious trouble.

It's not just that it's based on oil that's the problem, it's also that in general, Saudis don't even know what "work" is. Most of their revenue-generating businesses are planned and run by Westerners. They grow up with maids and servants.

In fact, I'm not sure they can do anything besides eat, pray, and watch soccer. It's a really, really strange place.

Going there on business was a very weird experience for me - the country somehow functions, but none of the locals actually do anything, as far as I could tell.

One of the 'solutions' to solar energy storage is to collect power from the east / west of you. Considering most grid scale storage is expensive and not that efficient ~5-10% transportation losses are viable which makes China, India and the EU well within range of Saudi solar electric power.

Another option is manufacturing, cheap power means cheap aluminum. And there is significant research into synthetic fuels, even if significantly more expensive than Oil right now they are likely in demand for aircraft in the long term.

The curse of oil, they have been talking about weaning themselves of it for a long time but have failed to achieve anything significant. It's more about their economy than their own consumption.

It behooves the world to have a lasting peace with Iran but the last thing the world needs is a consolidated regional religious power of any kind. It'd be better to focus on giving the Kurds a Kurdistan in the Northern part of Iraq to call home. I'd bet they'd be great allies to the West.

Yes this is a great point - though I'm not advocating for any consolidated religious power. I don't think Iran would really be a good fit for that anyway, as the political-religious combination is fairly recent and was an affect of major political polarization as the whole region started gaining power through oil trade.

The Kurds are an amazing and resilient group that have been an incredible ally to the west.

I don't know any group it's size who has been more historically oppressed, marginalized and killed with almost nobody paying any attention to it.

> but the last thing the world needs is a consolidated regional religious power of any kind.

As if that's not happened in Western societies?

Western societies improved a great deal after the dominance of the Church was broken.

Shoot, I completely missed the word "religious" in the original comment! I totally deserved the downvotes...