The spice must flow.
The fate of the middle east was sealed when the British commissioned the first oil-fueled battleship, Queen Elizabeth, in 1915. Her performance was so superior to anything else afloat she immediately made every one elses Navy obsolete.
Britain had plenty of coal, but she had no oil.
Of the great powers, only the Americans had any. Just one of the many threads that make up this Gordian Knot.