As GP said it is easy to underestimate the Middle East because of all the oil. Israel is obviously a high tech powerhouse. Iran alone has over 80 million people. Despite the tense relationship with the US, there are close to 10 thousand postgraduate Iranian students in the US, one of the largest after China and India. https://wenr.wes.org/2017/02/educating-iran-demographics-mas...
True enough, doesn't explain his "there's another reason than the oil for the fighting" suggestion. Germany is also "a high-tech powerhouse and has over 80 million people".. =)
Now readers are bound to come up with common tropes like "sectarian strife" or "tribal rivalry", but again.. he made it sound like there's a transdimensional portal hidden in the ME or something.. clearly had a non-obvious aspect in mind, that I wanted elaboration on. =)
If you read the article, OP was obviously responding to the silly claim that
"More likely, however, China’s dependence on trade, and particularly its interest in Middle East oil, may fall almost as fast as it has risen over the past thirty years."
I think OP was just pointing out that there is more than oil in the Middle East.
Well, do share that non-oil reason you had in mind there!