We don't take anything off the table and make it clear (privately), that Mecca is on top as the target of choice. Then we dismantle the Middle East, country by country, chomp, chomp, chomp -- and if you don't think that's what we're up to, you're dreaming. The Middle East must be brought into the modern world, kicking and screaming, or docile as a Libyan lamb. (And that last didn't happen by accident.) So we establish Iraq and Afghanistan as democracies. We don't give them an alternative. All this is predicated on the Arab world and everybody else believing GW will do what he says, and so far, like it or not, GW has been a man of his word.
When we threaten Mecca this means we threaten Qom too. The Iranians would love to have a Chinese nuclear umbrella to defend against nuclear threats to their Shiite holy city, Qom. Which is well described in "Among the Believers"
I doubt he is anything like the imperialist you make him out to be.
As long as someone is bringing the Middle East's oil to market in an orderly fashion, I don't think he or Cheney cares who owns it, who sells it, or who gets paid. They care about markets and threats to the markets, not about ownership of resources. After all, markets are about discounting resources -- mineral, labor, energy, you name it. As long as the markets are working (note the caveat), Bush and Cheney have what they want: orderly markets in which their client audience of New York middlemen can pencil-whip the producers and farmers to death.
That's been the U.S. economic model (at least in part) since the Civil War.