For a detailed history of how these regimes came into being and who sponsored them you might want to look at:

Arabia Without Sultans by Fred Halliday.
He's a professor of international relations at the LSE and has written extensively about the region. He gives original sources of all the details. But you don't have to dig too deep into any history of the region to come across the details. Just take a look at the history of the Saud family in Saudi Arabia, or take a peek at the Yemen story. Find out what the oil companies were doing when British troops were fighting the people of Dhofar - who was it who bought the weapons?...

For evidence about the sanctions look at Edward Said's books where he again gives copious references to newspaper reports of the region, UN reports, and also first hand evidence of the brutal treatment of palestinians. You don't even have to go that far. You can read the statements in Haaretz, the israeli newspaper. Some of the "labour" politicians go on about their intention to ethnically cleans Israel of arabs. You just need to make the effort to get at the evidence.

'course, you don't have to believe it...

As for Saddam Hussein being able to avoid the territorial aggression of the US in the oil region by complying with UN resolutions - that's just naive. The UN resolutions are not what this is about - otherwise Israel would have been hauled over the coals years ago.

And how come both Iran and Iraq have been considered good friends of the west at various times, including Yemen and Qatar when the regimes have been brutal to their populations?

There's way too much posturing on this thread and not enough concern about the issues.