Can we agree that the Middle East is where empires go to die?
I certainly wouldn't agree to that.
The Ottoman Turkish Empire held sway over much of the Middle East for over 600 years (~1300 - 1920s).
They were succeed by the British, French, and Italians following the First World War.
Those European nations maintained their territories in the ME until the end of the Second World War or (in some cases) until the mid 1960s.
But those European empires didn't "die" in the Middle East.
That time period saw a proliferation of nationalist movements all over the globe compounded by changes at home.
For instance, the British lost their colonies in the ME during this time, but they also lost their colonies in Africa and Southeast Asia as well.
It wasn't that the Middle East killed those empires as that the concept of empire became economically and politically untenable.
European nations were still recovering from the physical devastation of WWII, repaying massive loans to American banks, rebuilding their economies, and fighting among themselves politically as postwar alliances were forged. They were also dealing with a citizenry that was tired of war and a little bit incredulous about heading off in to the colonies to put down Middle Eastern/African/Asia rebellions against foreign European domination after having just come through the bloodiest war in history in order to save Europe from foreign domination.
The concept of a "graveyard of empires" is really a misnomer.
No empire has ever actually died as a result of colonialist ambitions.
Whether we talk about the Macedonian Empire in the 300s, or the European empires of the 19th and early 20th centuries, or the Soviet Union's and United States' imperial ambitions (such as they were/are and to the degree that they can realistically be called empires) none of them came to a screeching halt because they got involved in the Middle East.
At times they were bloodied, at times embarrassed, at times they overextended themselves, at times underestimated the indigenous peoples, and all eventually had to let go of their colonial claims, but none ended as a result of being involved there, and nothing happened in the Middle East that didn't also happen in Africa, Asia, India, the Americas, or even in Europe itself.
So, no, we don't agree that the Middle East is where empires go to die.