I believe a variation of DS’s “Oil is the worst thing for a country to have…” forum would go quite well here. The oil allows some of the Middle East governments to prop themselves up. Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Jordan, to name a few(and previously Iraq.) Syria has been using the UN embargo of Iraq to make money off its neighbor.
I do believe some of the leaders of some of these countries want to hold on to their form of government(the few making most of the decisions for the many) and their power as long as they can. The struggle for the leadership(prince v prince) is one example.