The necessity to understand the conduct of these hydrocarbon producer/exporter states has also become evident in two stages and for two different sets of reasons. In the 1970s, the brutal increase of prices confirmed the economic centrality of oil as an almost irreplaceable element of Western economic systems of production, while highlighting the concentration of supply in a highly politically unstable region. The particular geopolitical matrix that formed the backdrop to the elaboration of the first writing on the rentier state is thus significant: the two oil crises of 1973 and 1979 were caused by the Yom Kippur War (part of the Arab-Israeli conflict) and the National Revolution of Iran respectively, two major strategic events that happened in the Middle East and whose shock waves were felt far beyond the region’s borders.