Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is a country in the Middle East where everybody is constantly at least kind of mad because it's hot all the time, sand gets into all of your shit and no one is ever allowed to have any fun doing anything. It's kind of like Utah, if you've ever been there before. Saudi Arabia is an Islamic absolute monarchy, which I think basically means that if you live there, you shouldn't fuck around. Saudi Arabia is also located on top of the world's largest oil reserves, which means that despite continued criticism over human rights issues such as equality between men and women and the perennial question of whether or not cutting off the hands and feet of minor offenders is the best method of criminal rehabilitation, the king (currently Abdullah bin [more names]) still gets to have lots of weird sleepovers with powerful foreign heads of state. Saudi royalty aren't really all that different from the kid you knew in the fourth grade who was kind of a shitty person, but you hung out with him anyway because he had a Sega Dreamcast and Crazy Taxi was a really fun game.

The Burj al-Mamlaka, Saudi Arabia's tallest building, was built in 2002, in case someone ever needs to open a really huge bottle.

Qatar

Qatar is a Middle Eastern country whose national motto is "The letter 'u' is for pussies." Qatar is located on the Qatar Peninsula (sort of an Arabian answer to Michigan) bordering Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf in an area which is unarguably where Qatar is located. Qatar is an absolute monarchy in which all of the power belongs to an Emir who probably doesn't force his subjects to dance for his amusement nearly as much as I would, were I in his position. The current Emir is Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, and every other position of power is occupied by someone in his family who has those same names in a different sequence, meaning every government session eventually devolves into a really unfunny Abbott and Costello routine. Owing to its vast oil resources, Qatar had the highest GDP in the world last year, but remains pretty iffy on some human rights issues, proving that there's some truth in the old Beatles lyric: "I don't care too much for money / Money can't buy me fair treatment of Asian migrant laborers." The capital, Doha, is home to the Al Jazeera news network. Seriously, I swear to God it is. Why would I make that up? Fine, don't believe me? Look it up. See? It says so right there on Wikipedia. Honestly, I don't know why you wouldn't just trust me on that one.

Qatar is slated to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup for reasons that completely elude everyone.

Oman

Oman is a country and a 1976 horror film directed by Richard Donner that isn't as scary as it used to be and a 2006 remake that I haven't seen but probably wasn't that scary to begin with. Located in the Middle East, Oman is the birthplace of the popular cliché "Stuck between Saudi Arabia and hundreds of miles of gorgeous Arabian Sea coastline." Oman also shares borders with Yemen, which I don't know anything about, and United Arab Emirates, which is the one that has the indoor ski hill. Its capital, Muscat, has a human history dating back to the Stone Age and was mentioned as early as the 000s by Pliny the Elder, who described it as "A nice enough place, but good luck finding as much as a Quizno's there." The head of state is Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said, who lent his name to Oman's Grand Mosque in 2001 because he hates America. Most people have never heard of Oman because it doesn't have as much oil as Saudi Arabia and, as mentioned before, it lacks an indoor ski hill.

Muscat: Pretty enough, but lacking in restaurant chains that fill me with a sense of familiarity and comfort.

Lebanon

Lebanon is a primarily Arab country located on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. In ancient times, Lebanon was the homeland of the Phoenicians, a society of Mediterranean fishermen who vanished for several centuries before later reappearing in central Arizona, where they now run a series of successful glasses manufacturers (like ya do). Lebanon enjoyed considerable prosperity throughout much of the 20th century, often being referred to as "the Switzerland of the East" for its thriving banking industry; its capital, Beirut, was known as "the Paris of the Middle East" for its annoying plethora of local mimes. Of course, the mimes were the first to go when the Lebanese Civil War broke out in 1975. Don't let that fool you though, 'cause it wasn't all gravy. For one thing, Lebanon had an even worse 1982 than the rest of us - while most regular dudes were having a hard enough time just coping with Tommy Tutone and the death of Henry Fonda, the Lebanese were getting totally rolled on by the Israeli army. This resulted in the rise of Hezbollah, a militia named for an Arabic term meaning "A Bunch of Dudes with Mean Senses of Humor." To this very day, Hezbollah remains at the forefront of making people nervous.

Hezbollah have done pretty well for themselves, despite having no idea how to hold that gun correctly

Kuwait

Kuwait is a Middle Eastern nation that was on fire the last time anybody particularly cared about it (but presumably isn't anymore). Located on the northwestern shore of the Persian Gulf, Kuwait has a great deal of oil wealth for its relatively small size and, as a result, acts of aggression against it will not stand. An example of an act of aggression against Kuwait that was not allowed to stand occurred in 1990 when Saddam Hussein, no longer satisfied with just having a creepy mustache, decided to move on in and take that stuff. A constitutional monarchy whose capital is located in the aptly named Kuwait City, Kuwait's head honcho is Emir Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah Al-Mynameisofanimpracticallength. He has been described by Dick Cheney as "a pretty cool guy, all things considered."

This is the Prime Minister of Kuwait. I don't remember what his name is, but he sure looks pleased about something.

Jordan

Jordan is a small country in the Middle East, known by many as a place where Jesus used to hang out way back in the day. Following an impressive college career with the University of North Carolina, Jordan became the first Asian country to play in the NBA when it was drafted by the Chicago Bulls with the third overall pick in 1984. It went on to play a crucial role in the six NBA Championships won by the Bulls during the 1990s, and is considered by many to be the greatest basketball player of all time (Saudi Arabia has been known to claim that Kobe Bryant is better, but most scholars on the Middle East agree that this is only sour grapes). Because of its small size and its location adjacent to Iraq, Israel, and the Sinai Peninsula, most Jordanians are never very far from having their day completely ruined.

Jordan's lucrative Nike sponsorship has long been a source of resentment for neighboring countries.

Israel

Israel is a country in the Middle East that was invented by God 6,000 years ago, because he loved his chosen people so much that he decided they deserved to have a chunk of mostly miserable desert on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. Israel didn't officially become a nation until 1948, when the Jewish conspiracy controlling the universe connived to make the United Nations give them their own sovereign nation located in that miserable desert. Israeli history since then has consisted mainly of a series of armed conflicts that erupted every time that Egypt, Jordan and Syria needed a quick reminder of who their daddy was.

David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Jewish Prime Minister.

Iraq

Iraq is a [formerly evil] Middle Eastern nation that hasn't been an enjoyable place for anyone to live since about, well, a long time ago (Author's Note: A Google search of "When Iraq was last an enjoyable place to live" yielded two results, and they were both pornography). For many years, the Iraqis lived under the thumb of Saddam Hussein, a psychotic midget used car salesman who completely ruined the Tom Selleck Mustache™ for everybody (except for Tom Selleck). He reigned with an iron fist (well, really just a regular fist [full of chemical weapons]) until 2003, when an awesome guy named George W. Bush came along and boldly liberated those guys. As far as I know, they still haven't thanked him for that.

Dude had a throne. He was old-school.

Iran

Iran is a[n evil] nation located in the Middle East between Afghanistan and Iraq in what many have described as "a shitty place to put a country." Though Iran contains a wide array of ethnic groups, its primary population consists of Persians, who can travel through time and hate it when you call them Arabs. One famous Iranian is president/star of the popular television series "Mahmoud Says the Darnedest Things," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His international fame has run into a bit of an obstacle in that about eight percent of the people who have heard of him actually know how to pronounce his name (Author's Note: For fuck's sake people, it's not even really that difficult).

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei did not invent that beard - he just perfected it.

Bahrain

Bahrain is a small island nation in the Persian Gulf that aspires to be a sort of junior United Arab Emirates, which is lucky because if there's one thing the world needs, it's another soulless, decadent shithole where Arab billionaires can go during weekends to purchase little vials of crude oil and then inject them into the tiny blood vessels between their toes. The capital, Manama (twinned with Bahrain's second-largest city, Doodoodoodoodoo) is noteworthy for having a skyline designed entirely by and for people who are twelve years old. Bahrain is nearly impossible to say out loud without sounding at least kinda pissed.

Manama's most iconic landmark, the twin towers of Bahrain Financial Harbor. Most people are disappointed when they find out that it doesn't transform into a giant robot.

Azerbaijan

A fictional country located on the western edge of the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan was invented by a UMass grad student in 2002 for the purposes of an infamous spam e-mail. The scam went on to be so successful that to this day some people believe the country to be real, but come on, Azerbaijan? What are we supposed to call people from there, huh? Azerbaijanians? I wasn't born yesterday.

Azerbaijan (allegedly).

Afghanistan

Afghanistan is a Middle Eastern country that most Americans are aware of. Its people rate consistently among the angriest in the world, owing mainly to the fact that other nations are pretty much constantly invading their country despite their total lack of anything worth having in a strategic or economic sense. I haven't done even the most rudimentary research on this but I'm pretty sure that if you are impolite to a person in Afghanistan, they are allowed to cut your head off. Their main export is terror and their national anthem is probably not catchy at all.

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