Global findings suggest a positive effect of oil rents on human development, yet this result is exclusively driven by the tremendous gains in human development in the Middle East, in particular the GCC countries. Why is this the case? What prompted rulers in the MENA region to share the wealth of oil much more widely than elsewhere? Based on British archival sources, this paper develops an explanation for this puzzle and highlights the unique convergence of foreign-sponsored subversion and systemic vulnerability in the Middle East as the key drivers behind the broad-based distribution of rents. More generally, this paper emphasises threats to the incumbent elite during moments of regime formation as an important explanation of authoritarian legitimation strategies. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods in a mixed-methods design, the paper proceeds in two steps: first, we establish a seemingly positive effect of oil rents on human development at the global level, which – at closer inspection – turns out to be exclusively driven by high-rent countries in the MENA region. Second, we use archival material from the British Foreign Office and the former Political Residency in the Gulf to demonstrate that the unique confluence of leftist subversive threats, emanating from the region’s ‘progressive’ states, and the weak capacity to defend themselves without foreign assistance heightened rulers’ sense of insecurity and induced them to follow a strategy of preventing nascent revolutionary threats by distributing oil rents more widely. In particular, we focus on three episodes to substantiate this claim: Kuwait pre- and post-1956, which marks the ascendancy of Arab nationalism under Nasser; Oman’s reaction to the Dhofar rebellion in the late 1960s; and the inception of the UAE’s development strategy also in the late 1960s.