Oil War

The Oil War, (石油戦争) also known as the Great Middle Eastern War, or the Saudi-Iran War, (サウジ・イラン戦争) was a region-wide conflict involving Iran, Saudi Arabia and their allies that lasted throughout 2023 to 2024.

Prelude
Tensions between the two historical Middle Eastern rivals rose after the United States withdrew its military forces from the region in 2021, leaving a power vacuum that prompted an arms race between Iran and Saudi Arabia by the following year, in which the Saudis purchased 91 U.S.-produced M1A1 Abrams main battles tanks, which Iran denounced as a "hostile move". The governments of both emerging superpowers began to simultaneously increase the size of their militaries; this included the development and testing of ballistic missile systems on both sides, culminating in the two countries obtaining similar thermonuclear weapons seven months later, with Saudi Arabia's successful test yielding 13.5 megatons.

Furthermore, Iran and Saudi Arabia took advantage of Iraq, which had descended into civil strife between its ethnic Sunni and Shiite population after the Iraqi government collapsed in July 2023, leading to internal unrest and a number of ethnic and religious conflicts. Saudi Arabia moved into southern Iraq to protect the Sunni Muslim refugees in the provinces, while Iran protected the Shiites, allied itself with the Kurds (allowing them to manage the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq), and openly supported the formation of a Kurdish state, bringing the latter into direct conflict with Turkey, another close ally of the West. This essentially set the path to war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and their respective allies.

The War
After declaring an "alliance" with southern Iraq around August 2023, and a coalition with Jordan, Egypt and Turkey, all predominantly Sunni Muslim countries, which some "ignorantly designated" as the "Arab Holy Alliance", Saudi Arabia strove to stabilize and guide the shaky nation of Iraq with American support. This, however, led to Iran calling the coalition an "unacceptable Saudi intervention" and accusing Saudi Arabia of attempting to turn Iraq into a "client state". Swearing its intent to defend Iraq from colonization by a "corrupt group of thieves" in June 2016, Iran, supported by Syria, several Kurdish allies and the resurgent Afghani Taliban, started the war by launching its first incursions, taking Kirkuk and Arbil, two cities in northern Iraq, in the same day, and making bombing runs on key targets on Iraq's southern border, including a power station and a bridge.

Talks to end the war, with the United Nations likely playing a critical role, stalemated multiple times in 2024, and as a result, hundreds of oil wells and pipelines in the region were damaged or destroyed, burning uncontrollably, and as the war escalated in September, gas prices in the U.S. sky rocketed to nearly $13, and to $20 from 2025 to 2033. Saudi Arabia seemed to be the most badly hit by the war at this time, with Iran's other opponents, Jordan, Israel, Qatar, and southern Iraq, along with Lebanon, also being shown under heavy conflict; compared to its enemies, Iran seemed to have been at least initially largely unscathed. Despite America's worsening internal situations and economic crisis, the U.S. military took part in the war to some limited degree, as Connor Morgan (a former U.S. soldier) was stated to be a veteran of the Oil War.

Aftermath and Consequences
The war had palpable lasting effects, most notably the severe depletion of oil resources, leading to where the Great Collapse was considered to be at its worst. Among these effects in the United States were the emergence of black markets along America's East Coast dealing in illicit trade of such resources, and the disruption in global energy supplies, which even causing New Yorkers to grow gardens on balconies and rooftops in an attempt to grow more food in 2025. The shortage of oil proved to be so severe that massive cargo carriers found at any large port in the world by 2030 were reduced to "relics of the Age of Oil", providing a flexible means of transportation for China's PLA.

The Persian Gulf region's ongoing instability contributed significantly to the decline of the world economy itself, and was one of the major factors further worsening the domestic situations of Western nations, along with a strike in Venezuela, Nigeria's civil wars, the Second Korean War, Russia's economic collapse leading to the rise of the Eurasian Union and the eventual unification of the entire Middle East and North Africa as the New Caliphate.