> Virtually nothing happened in decades

it was decades of very intense proxy wars: Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon. Iran didn't hesitate to attack oil assets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abqaiq%E2%80%93Khurais_attack

> Is this what the "western world" is about? Securing resources by bombing people preemptively because they might do something you don't like one day?

sure, that's what humans do through centuries. If you don't do it, you get extinct because other forces become stronger and bomb you.