Seen from the air, the Middle East is a forbidding landscape. Most of the area is hot and dry. Life is only possible where rainfall is adequate or where water has become available through irrigation from rivers, dams or wells. Territorial size without adequate water is of little value to most Middle Eastern states, except where it increases the area for potential oil drilling. The soils of the more desertified areas of the region are quite poor, which results both from the lack of precipitation and consequent lack of plant growth. The best soils are the alluvial soils of Mesopotamia and the Nile valley.

Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia have a thin coastal zone backed by dry mountain ranges (Atlas and others) parallel to the water. South of that is the Sahara Desert. Egypt is mostly desert (Libyan in the west, Nubian in the south), cut by the northern flowing Nile. Nearly all its people live in the narrow alluvial strip along the river. A mountain range runs northward from Yemen, through western Arabia into Jordan, ending up in Turkey. Another small range starts in the Sinai Peninsula, traversing Israel into western Lebanon. Between these ranges, lies a deep depression that includes the Dead Sea and Galilee. Most of Turkey is a ring of mountains (Taurus in south, Pontic in north) surrounding a central plain. Toward its east the mountains get higher, splitting into a range that runs across the top of Iran to Afghanistan (the Elburz) and one that ones down the western side of Iran nearly to Pakistan (the Zagros). The Iranian Plateau, a high, dry desert, occupies the center of that country, continuing into western Afghanistan. The mountains in Afghanistan rise irregularly into the Hindu Kush and Pamirs as we go east and north.

The most northerly parts of Turkey and Iran have a more moderate climate than most of the region. There are areas with heavy rainfall and almost tropical vegetation south of both the Black and Caspian Seas. Lands with comfortable climate for human habitation is found in a relatively narrow strip that begins in the Dardanelles, runs down the seaward slope of Turkey’s Taurus Mountains and then swings south to follow the Lebanon mountains into Israel. Here the mountains catch adequate precipitation and temperatures are moderated by the sea.

In the rest of the Middle East, only where mountains catch a few clouds is there enough precipitation and low enough temperatures for agriculture without irrigation. Most of Iraq is flat and dry. Its life is dependent on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flowing from the mountains that ring it. Before the discovery of oil, no one could have pictured it as the Cradle of Civilization.

Most of the Middle East has a Mediterranean climate with the precipitation coming in winters followed by hot dry summers. In Yemen and Oman, however, this regime is replaced by one dependent on the monsoon seasons that characterize Africa further south and India.