The dramatic rise in oil prices during the 1970s launched a wave of global debates over how Arab petrodollars should be used within international economic and political systems. In the Arab world itself, a new sense of hope that oil wealth could be utilized to create a new world order widely took hold, though there was a wide range of opinion as to the ultimate goals of such an endeavor. This paper analyzes Iraqi and Saudi newspaper articles and political cartoons to reveal the underappreciated role of debates over the international deployment of Arab petrodollars as a means to either uphold or attack the domestic legitimacy of the Baathist regime in Baghdad and the Saudi monarchy in Riyadh. Utilizing a historical, qualitative approach, this research undertakes a close reading of pieces from the Iraqi newspaper al-Thawra and the Saudi newspapers al-Riyadh and al-Medina. As the national governments of these newspapers largely controlled the political messaging of their content, these articles and political cartoons provide a window into how Baghdad and Riyadh sought to advance narratives that legitimized their own rule and delegitimized the other in the eyes of their citizens and the larger Arab reading public. The competing narratives of Baghdad and Riyadh centered around whether or not their international use of petrodollars advanced the causes of the Arab and Third Worlds. My research finds that the relationship of the United States to these two issues dominates these debates. Iraq narrated itself as leading the Arab and Third Worlds in their struggle to end the economic and political exploitation of US imperialism, while condemning the House of Saud for its investments in and trade with the United States. The Baathist regime thus capitalized upon rising anti-American sentiment and the vastly different levels of economic ties between the United States and Iraq and Saudi Arabia to shore up political support at home and abroad. Unable to deny the large number of petrodollars flowing from Saudi Arabia to the United States, Saudi media instead pushed an opposing narrative, in which they emphasized the perceived benefits of economic and political collaboration with the United States, arguing that Saudi-US petrodollar interdependence enabled Riyadh to extract benefits from the United States for Saudi Arabia and the wider Arab and Third Worlds.