Oil.
Oil is the reason we haven't just blown the place all to hell and gone.
There other reasons to be concerned with the region. For one, it's the birthplace of our two major religions (in terms of numbers of adherents).
It's also the hatching place of a third religion, may of whose adherents seem to want to dominate the world. Oil is their lever to do that. Without the oil, they'd just be a bunch of goat herders following the rantings of a pedophilic warlord.