Victor Davis Hanson calls this adding Insult to Injury:
The worst thing about the global oil spike brought on by increased consumption is not worries over global warming, or the idea that the United States is not “energy independent” (Japan does not overly worry that it must rely on others for food), but that our thirst has driven up the world price — and with it the importance of the Middle East while sending half-a-trillion dollars in petroprofits to a primordial region.And now we are seeing the wages of that circulating cash, as the Gulf monarchies are racing to acquire nuclear reactors ($4 billion a pop) to counter Iran’s soon to be on-line nuclear arsenal.
In other words, a region that has neither the innate economic resources to fund such a program nor the scientific expertise to see it through nor the stability that is the precursor for economic development, has the cash from oil (that someone else found, exploited, and developed) to buy Western help in creating the very weapons that might soon be turned against the West.