Post WW2 strikes me as kind of an odd time frame because of course that's actually when most of these states become independent from foreign powers.

I think for most of that period though you have to ask whether the foreign interference and intervention actually was meaningfully more substantial in a Cold War context than other parts of the world. I'm not sure whether qualitatively on quantitatively that is in fact the case given Soviet domination of eastern Europe and the host of interventions, interference and Cold War related conflicts in east Asia, Africa and Latin America.

But if we were to just stipulate the point and ask why the Middle East would be a place where you would have foreign intervention and interference above beyond the basic Cold War aspect that the US and USSR were intervening pretty much everywhere all the time, then I think you could point to a few things.

First of all, in the early part of the Cold War, the emerging Arab nationalist movements were basically ideologically neutral in the Cold War context. The United States, small-r republican as it is, thought it was fine to see the old European imperialist-installed monarchies in countries like Egypt go out the door and that it was necessary and good to embrace and empower Arab nationalism. So for instance Gamal Abdel Nasser's enormous popularity region-wide was partly the result of his radio broadcasts on Sowt al-Arab, "The Voice of the Arabs", which was a radio station that was initially funded and equipped by the CIA.

The Russians felt much the same in terms of wanting to be the steward of anti-imperialism.

Interestingly both Russia and the US were also initially pro-Zionist, so Truman recognizes the new state of Israel in 1948 after a matter of minutes while Russia becomes the first country to recognize Israel in legislation, I believe a couple days later.

Meanwhile the European imperial powers, particularly Britain and France, are basically undergoing de-colonization. This happened in spurts, some sudden, some protracted. So French are basically forced to grant independence to Syria and Lebanon right after WW2, the British are kicked out of Suez in 1956 and that's all quite sudden but then the Algerian War of Independence drags out from 1954-1962. Nonetheless a large part of these "interventions" are actually the end of empire.

The Suez Crisis and 1956 though are when I think a lot of the dynamics I've just described above start to change. Nasser ends up recognizing Communist China and completes an arms deal with Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia and in violation of a regional arms embargo that had basically been agreed to (very imperfectly) after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war to try and keep the peace. The Soviet Union then also stepped in to fund and helped construct the Aswan High Dam after Eisenhower withdrew support because of Nasser's recognition of China.

Pretty much after that point you basically enter the period of the Arab Cold War where the Arab nationalist cause became more specifically an Arab nationalist socialist cause and the United States, generally speaking, came to back the conservative or status quo Arab monarchies-- Jordan, Saudi, the Gulf States, Iraq prior to 1958, Iran prior to 1979 (not Arabs, but you get my point), etc.

And, eventually, critically, Israel.

The Soviets, in turn, generally backed the Arab Socialist movements-- Nasser in Egypt, the Baathists in Iraq and Syria and so on.

There are also associated developments that I won't get into like the attempt to form the "Baghdad Pact" as a kind of Middle East equivalent of NATO, the Eisenhower Doctrine which stated that any Middle Eastern country that requested it would receive assistance from the United States in fighting communism (and which was acted out in the little known 1958 US intervention in Lebanon).

So ideologically and politically the region is very much "in play" in the Cold War.

It's also, I don't quite want to see uniquely in the second half of the 20th century for fear that someone will contradict me but it's one of the few places in the world where you have repeated, large scale, sophisticated inter-state conflict. So whereas the defining conflicts of the Cold War I think you would point to, say, Vietnam or Afghanistan which are in large part these sort of shadowy civil conflict proxy guerrilla wars, the wars involving Israel in '48, '56, '67 and '73 aren't really like that. They're much more WW2-esque. Huge territories, and indeed entire states, were threatened with outright conquest on a very short time scale. They were fought with exactly the kind of sophisticated, mechanized, technologized combined-arms approach that you would have seen had their been a conventional conflict between NATO and the Warsaw pact in Europe.

All of that made these wars very dangerous and of intense interest to the US and USSR. It is no coincidence that in several of these crises both the US and the USSR contemplated or threatened a nuclear war and that the Soviets considered direct intervention in three of the Arab-Israeli wars and a fourth time in 1970 during the "War of Attrition" between Egypt and Israel.

I think lastly I would want to touch on oil, because I think you could make the case that oil is less important to the regional and geo-political importance of the Middle East than some very ill-informed commentary about the region might have you believe.

I would make that case on the basis that the majority of these interventions and interferences aren't actually occurring in oil-bearing countries or primarily because of oil. If that were the case then you would see conflict and intervention in, say, Saudi's Eastern Province or the Gulf States. Instead of having so much of it focused on the oil-poor levant. I also think prior to the 1973 Opec oil embargo, oil is a strategic resource but not necessarily viewed as being a critically vulnerable one. Russia had lots of oil. The US had lots of oil. Oil was certainly profitable for whoever had control of it and of vital importance for the petro states, but not of the kind of criticality that fuels contemporary conspiracies that it's all really about oil.

Sourcewise:

I haven't finished it but I'm quite enjoying Ike's Gamble so far. I always tend to recommend Eugene Rogan's The Arabs: A History and D.K. Fieldhouse's Western Imperialism in the Middle East 1914-1958. I think of the regional cold-war aspects of the wider Muslim world are well-covered in Steve Coll's book Ghost War. Francis Fukuyama's essay Soviet Threats to Intervene in the Middle East 1956-1973 would also be worth a read.

Regarding reasons for 'many' military interventions in the Middle East: for most of the last 100 years, core essence of most of these were relations between various foreign powers, and their attempts to directly influence developments in preferred direction. 'Oil' did play its role, no doubt, but by far not as often as generally accepted. In period 1991-2015, reasons were slightly different (i.e. primarily related at outside powers attempting to re-shape the Middle East once again), but more recently relations between the West and Russia are dominant once again.

Here I would recommend readings like A Line in the Sand and The Great Syrian Revolt - as 'starters'.

In the first, you can read how mutual relations between Great Britain and France - plus their relations to various other powers (Germany, Russia) - influenced their shaping of the modern-day Middle East. The second is a rare insight (even more so because it's based on French documentation, but published in English) into one of early reactions of local people (and their motivation) to such behaviour.

It remained very much that way during the subsequent times, i.e. after 1945. For example, at least a part of British involvement in the Suez War of 1956 was British concern about 'raising Soviet influence in Egypt' - and London's failure to convince Nasser to join the Baghdad Pact. French, on the other hand, were curious to remove Nasser because - between others - he was providing support to Algerian insurgents and various other anti-colonial movements in Africa. For a very good insight into contemporary way of thinking I would recommend Roy Fullick's and Geoffrey Powell's Suez, the Double War.

Similar reasons were crucial for the British intervention in Jordan, and the US in Lebanon, of 1958: both operations were launched in reaction to what was seen as a 'threat' of 'Soviet clients' - Egypt, Syria and Iraq - prompting local uprisings that threatened pro-Western governments. By 1961, this came so far that Britain launched another intervention in Kuwait after Baghdad merely 'thought loudly' about a possibility of invading its southern neighbour.

Through the 1960s, the USA were gradually dragged into openly supporting Israel - out of Israeli interest in securing US military aid but also the US interest in securing Israeli support for the US intervention in Vietnam. These efforts went so far that President Johnson granted permission for export of F-4 Phantoms to Israel expecting Israeli government would express its support - which never happened. Versa-vice: in 1970, Soviets launched a military intervention in Egypt in reaction to what they saw as US providing Israel with vastly superior military capabilities - F-4 Phantoms - which in turn required bolstering Egyptian defensive capabilities. 'Bonus' were basing rights in places like Marsa Matruh and at Cairo West: these bases were interesting for Soviets exclusively within the context of the Cold War rivalry with the USA. In this regards, I would recommend Taking Sides.

1970s were characterised by the Nixon Doctrine (see: 'we arm our allies so they can defend themselves on their own'), and 1980s by most of involved parties maintaining the status quo. Thus, there were relatively few military interventions. Exceptions were such like operations against Libya in 1981 and 1986, and the intervention in Lebanon of 1983. A fine study of backgrounds is El Dorado Canyon.

Motivation for more recent interventions - i.e. those launched since 1990-1991 - was slightly more complex, though still dominated by the same topics like before, including 'maintaining the status quo' (Iraq, 1991), or 're-shaping the Middle East' (Iraq, 2003; Libya 2011).