Would you agree, Q, that the primary purposes of the West's efforts to achieve "stability" in the Middle East have been to secure a steady supply of relatively cheap oil and to achieve other commercial and political advantages in the region?

If so, well, that's basically what empires always try to do. They try to achieve access to valuable resources and engage in profitable trade. If military force is required to do it, then they use military force.

It was the search for strategic resources that basically drove Japan into war with China, and ultimately to war with the Western Allies in WWII. Japan needed large supplies of oil and steel, supplies which could not be secured domestically, so they went to war over it.

The USA is willing to go to war at any time to protect its access to the enormous strategic resources in the Middle East, but it must convince its people that there is some other reason for going to war, as the public is not ready to have their sons and daughters die for oil. So...other reasons are found.

non-existent WMDs
the "War on Terror"
Iran's nuclear program
"creating democracy" (a laughable lie, but I'm sure some people believe it)

I don't think the USA is particularly evil for doing what it's doing, because it's just behaving exactly as large empires have always behaved, going right back to Greece, Rome or Egypt. It's doing what imperial ambition requires, and telling its public whatever it thinks will best motivate them to support an aggressive foreign policy and initiate wars not of national defense, but wars of choice.

Again, that's what empires do. When a war erupts between a small power and a great power, it is very seldom, if ever, the small power that planned it.