You're trying to get at the strategic value of the Middle East?

That aside for a moment, I think it is geopolitical accident that chooses a certain focal at one time or another for the contestation of the global order.

Now as for geopolitical strategy, the multipolar global order that the US/NATO resists is an order even more globalized where the connexion between the East, Africa and Europe, the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean, will be essential, as will be the Arctic, Americas and Pacific.

The US/NATO seeks to control how the new global turns out and in the geopolitics that plays out, the Middle East is now the focal point particularly because the regional competion going on is so hot and the geopolitics drawn in for one reason or another, that the importance is magnified.

In the nuclear age, a regional war can thus easily turn into a limited world war then from a world war into a nuclear war. The last world wars weren't so different in this regard.

The pipelines, highways, railroads, water basins, etc. - I don't believe - are not the prime motivation of the US/NATO. These have much regional significance. But in the post imperial era less significance for the great power rivalry.