Three Kings is a movie about a small group of American soldiers in Iraq near the end of the Gulf War that want to steal a large amount of gold that is known to be hidden somewhere near their home base. When they find a map to the bunkers that carry the gold they decide to go out and find the gold. When they see all the refugees and people being oppressed by Saddam Hussein's army they step forward to make it stop. This makes it so that they accidentally break the peace accord. After they have gotten the gold and helped the people, they take the people they found being kept hostage for being rebels with them to liberate them into freedom. As U.S soldiers they are not allowed to do that because they are not supposed to involve themselves in that issue. The soldiers take these people to the Iranian border to seek refuge but right as they are about to cross with the soldiers who are there for protection, other U.S soldiers show up and arrest the ones who were trying to help the people. The soldiers who were trying to stop them then realized that these people needed help after all so they helped them get across the border. The other men were then arrested.   

The Iran-Iraq War began with a religious conflict. The Shiites had a revolution that took place in Iran and the Shah was replaced by Ayatollah Khomeini. This made the Sunni leader in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, unhappy. The Iranian leader really didn't like Americans. A war broke out because people feared that the revolution would spread to Iraq. They both said that the war was over territory but it was really a war of religion. A conflict that was more over oil and resources than religion was the Kuwait and Gulf War. Iraq invaded Kuwait for their resources. When this happened people did not want a replay of what happened in Munich so they places sanctions on Iraq to pull out and 30 countries joined a coalition against Iraq. Israel did not join because the Americans feared that the other Arab countries would pull out. Kuwait was liberated within 4 days. Middle east conflicts were about both religion and resources.    

The four Arab-Israeli wars were mostly won by the Israeli's which showed the Arabs that they could not be pushed around. In the Suez Crisis, the Israeli's were not permitted to use to canal because Nasser, leader of Egypt made it part of the country (nationalized it). The Israeli's thought the Egyptians would attack so they did so first which was their policy. The crisis was resolved by the UN and Israel's economy flourished with the peacekeepers guarding the border. Israel gained from this. Another war that was meant to harm Israel but actually helped them was the 6 Days War. Nasser removed the peacekeeping forces from the canal region and they Egyptians were going to attack. Due to Israel's good intelligence agency they knew the attack was coming and did the first strike policy. They destroyed the Egyptian airforce and took much of their territory. The US had to ask Israel to stop because they didn't want other Arab nations to get angry. This showed that Israel was powerful. Another war is the Yom Kippur War that helped Israel establish itself as a country. This was was begun on Yom Kippur and it was the first time the Israeli's didn't expect it. The Egyptians attacked and they were caught by surprise and still the Israeli's fought back and the borders were unchanged. Many Arab-Israeli wars, that were meant to destroy the Israeli's, actually helped them establish themselves as a country world wide.  

When the Ottoman Empire broke up Arab governments were set up in all mandates except Palestine. When the Balfour Declaration came in the British agreed to set up a Jewish homeland in Palestine even though the British also promised the Arabs independence. This created some tension. In 1945, to protest the Balfour declaration, the Arab league was created. With this conflict, the UN suggested a partition that the Jews were happy with but the Arabs were not. Because they were so unhappy the Arab's attacked but what they did not expect was that the Jews would actually win due to their superior war technology. Many palestinians became refugees and Arabs began terrorist attacks on Israel. Because of this attack on Israel and the other terrorist attacks, Israel vowed that each time a Palestinians killed a jewish citizen they would kill 2 palestinians. Britain made things worse for these two groups because they promised both of them what they wanted even though they could only give it to one, which caused a lot of tension. Although the UN tried to help the situation with the partition it was too late because too much hatred at built up.